Blake Reese was out of gas, luckily he only needed to trudge on 90-more feet after a pair of throwing errors sent him 270 feet around the bases and home, breaking a 1-1 tie that had lasted six innings.
“I was out of gas, I was seeing stars by the time I got home,” Reese said after the 12-inning game. “I felt like I was moving in slow motion. The guys said I was moving pretty good. It didn’t feel like it but I’ll take it.”
Kevin O’Sullivan and the Florida Gators will take it, too, and they’ll take a 5-1 extra inning win to advance to the Gainesville Regional final for the third straight year in a row.
The Gators and Bulls had to deal with a 38-minute lightning delay on Friday in the top of the third. Less than 30 minutes into the game and both teams were sent off the field for 38 minutes. Reese then spent the better part of the game that was just two minutes shy of five hours sitting on the bench.
“It’s funny. For whatever reason before that inning I said to myself ‘I should probably go job to the cages and back because I’ve been sitting around for a while,’” he laughed retelling it after the game. “I’m just happy I had a chance to help the team win and I am happy that I got up and decided to start moving around a little bit.”
Reese’s run opened the floodgates for the Gators. Nick Horvath singled up the middle and Jonathan India followed with a walk. The pair advanced 90-feet on a wild pitch and Dalton Guthrie walked to load the bases. JJ Schwarz came to the plate with the bases loaded and one out. His groundout to second was enough to score Horvath and Nelson Maldonado broke it open with a two RBI single back up the middle to make it 5-1.
Early on two pitchers going back and forth with each other, befuddling batters left and right, framed the game. USF starter Shane McClanahan retired the first six batters he faced before walking Horvath to start the third inning. McClanahan became a casualty to the 38-minute lightning delay. Despite throwing in the bullpen, he wouldn’t reenter the game when play resumed.
For the Gators Alex Faedo was sensational. Pitching at McKethan Stadium for one of the last times in his career the right hander struck out 10 over seven innings, holding USF to just one run on four hits.
The Gators finally got the bats going in the fourth inning. Schwarz drew a one out walk and advanced to second when Nelson Maldonado grounded out to third. Mike Rivera opened the scoring with a single to left field that brought Schwarz in from second.
Alex Faedo found trouble for the first time in the bottom of the fifth. The junior started the frame with his sixth strikeout of the game but slipped on his first offering to Joe Genord. Garrett Zech singled through the left side and Duke Stunkel evened the game with a single to left field. Faedo bounced back with two more strikeouts to get out of the inning.
Much like Friday, Kevin O’Sullivan turned to his closer, Michael Byrne early. The sophomore relieved Alex Faedo after Faedo walked Duke Stunkel to leadoff the eighth inning. Byrne threw 25 pitches on Friday and continued to be an absolute workhorse.
Two ground outs and a strikeout ended the eighth. Two strikeouts and a lineout put another zero on the board in the ninth. Two more strikeouts and a groundout in the 10th and 11th as his pitch count ran north of 70.
“Unbelievable,” Reese said. “Michael Byrne is the MVP of this team right now if you ask me. It’s lights out. It’s good for him, he deserves it. The guys love him. We’ve got a lot of pitchers contributing. The job Alex did tonight to hand it over to Byrne. If you were to look back at the end of the game and all you heard was Alex Faedo and Michael Byrne pitched, I like our chances.”
Byrne held on to earn his third win of the season. When asked why he left Byrne in for so long, after throwing the day before, O’Sullivan was frank about how much this game meant for Florida.
“This is one of those games where your season is on the line,” he said.
He’s right. If the Gators had dropped the game to USF they would have been back on the field playing in an elimination game against Bethune-Cookman less than 12 hours after this ballgame ended. They would then need to beat the Wildcats before getting into the Regional final, where they would have to beat USF not once but twice. Simply put the Gators don’t have the arms to do that.
“We don’t have quite as much depth as we’ve had in the past, but we have some really good front line starters and we have a guy at the back end that, like I’ve said all along, has just been outstanding for us all year long,” O’Sullivan said.
Instead the Gators need only one more win to advance to the Super Regionals. They’ll have Brady Singer on the mound, which means they’ll like their chances no matter who wins the first game of the day.