For the second day in a row, the Gators lost the battle of the bullpens. No. 9 UF jumped out to a 3-0 lead over Liberty in the fourth inning but was outscored 5-0 the rest of the way to lose the game 5-3 and drop their first series of the season.
Liberty pounded out 10 hits compared to just five for the home team. The Gators only recorded two hits over the final five innings, and one of them was a bunt single.
“Their pitching staff did a really good job of attacking the entire weekend, and, obviously, that was probably the difference in the weekend,” UF coach Kevin O’Sullivan said. “I think both teams played well defensively, and they just did a really nice job on the mound.”
Florida scored all three of their runs in the bottom of the fourth inning against Flames starter Max Alba.
With a runner on first and two outs, the Gators executed a hit-and-run to perfection. Wyatt Langford got a good jump from first base, and Josh Rivera lined the ball into the left field corner. Langford scored without a throw.
The next batter, catcher BT Riopelle, crushed a hanging 1-2 breaking ball well out of the stadium down the right field line for his first homer as a Gator.
Meanwhile, UF starter Pierce Coppola made it through four innings unscathed but ran into trouble in the fifth as his pitch count soared above 80. Gray Betts laced a ground-rule double into the right field corner with one out, and Aaron Anderson followed with a home run to left field to cut the lead to 3-2.
Coppola finished with five hits and two earned runs allowed in 4 1/3 innings. He walked two and struck out seven. It was a good showing for a first career appearance, but he’ll need to be more efficient moving forward to get through five or more innings.
“I think that’s the thing he’s going to have to improve on,” O’Sullivan said. “You can see the talent. He’s going to be really good. He is good, but, when you play quality teams, it’s a pitch here, a pitch there or an at bat here or an at bat there that makes the difference in the ballgame.”
Fellow freshman lefty Philip Abner replaced him on the mound after Anderson’s homer and struggled mightily. He gave up a single to Stephen Hill and an RBI double to Brady Gulakowski to tie the game at three. Abner wiggled out of the inning with a flyout and a groundout.
Abner jumped ahead of Derek Orndorff 0-2 to start the sixth but then threw four consecutive balls to walk him. He also walked Jake Lazzaro to put two runners on with nobody out and prompt a pitching change.
Nick Ficarrotta took over on the mound and did a nice job of escaping a potential huge inning, but not without giving up a sacrifice fly to Betts that gave the Flames a 4-3 lead.
Gulakowski launched an opposite field home run to left off of Garrett Milchin in the seventh to finish the scoring.
The Gators brought the potential tying run to the plate in the bottom of the ninth after Jud Fabian walked, but Cade Hungate struck out Colby Halter swinging to pick up his second save in as many days.
While the pitching staff experienced some struggles over the back half of the game, O’Sullivan said that this series loss falls largely on the position players. Six of the 11 pitchers who took the mound this weekend made their first career appearances. There are going to be some uneven performances early in the season with that much inexperience.
However, offense was supposed to be this team’s strength, as seven of their starters received extensive playing time last year.
Instead, they struck out 31 times this weekend and hit just .186 as a team. Halter hit just .231 and struck out four times from the leadoff spot. Kendrick Calilao went 0-for-11 with a team-high five strikeouts. Rivera is at .182 with four strikeouts. Kris Armstrong is 1-for-12 with four strikeouts.
The inability to score a bunch of runs created more stressful situations for the young pitchers than O’Sullivan would have preferred.
“Ideally, you want [the pitchers] to start an inning and maybe have a lead or something like that so they can get a little comfortable, but these have been high-pressure situations right from the beginning, and that’s where you’re seeing the deep counts and maybe not being able to control their emotions as much as they will as they move forward,” O’Sullivan said.
“It’s surprising because we’ve been pretty good in the preseason with the two-strike approach. We’ve got really good arms, too, so it’s not like they’re seeing arms that they haven’t seen before. When you look at it with the older guys – and I’m not going to mention names, obviously – but they’re older guys, and we struck out a tremendous amount of times this weekend, and we had not done that in the preseason.”
Losing a series is never a good thing, especially at home and especially on opening weekend. However, O’Sullivan pointed out that Liberty isn’t the typical opening weekend opponent. They made a regional final last year and were ranked in Perfect Game’s preseason poll. This was a good team that they played, and it will hopefully serve as a learning experience for the Gators.
“When you play good teams, it certainly gives you an idea of where you’re at and where you need to improve,” O’Sullivan said. “You can play lesser competition and walk away with three wins, and you have no idea what you’ve got to improve on moving forward. So, that’s the positive I’m going to pull out of it is we’ll look at it, and we’ll figure out some things in the lineup that we need to do.”