The last two weeks have been horrendous for the Gators. They’ve lost five SEC games in a row, plummeted out of the rankings and seen their team earned run average soar as their pitchers struggled to throw strikes.
They’ve got an absolute gauntlet of games coming up, with back-to-back-to-back series against Arkansas, Vanderbilt and Tennessee teams that are all ranked inside the top-16 in D1Baseball’s poll. Also mixed in there is their second meeting with Florida State, this time in Tallahassee.
So, the Gators absolutely needed a feel-good game like the one that they had against an overmatched Florida A&M team on Tuesday night at Florida Ballpark. UF won the game 13-3.
The offense churned out 17 hits, which tied for their third-most in a game this season. Three of those hits left the stadium for home runs. On the mound, they limited the Rattlers to no runs on just one hit through seven innings and saw Nick Pogue finally put together a solid outing in his return from Tommy John surgery.
Jud Fabian, Wyatt Langford and Josh Rivera all turned in three-hit games, and Fabian came up a triple shy of the cycle despite being pulled from the game in the sixth inning. Mac Guscette and Deric Fabian both added two hits to the Gators’ tally. BT Riopelle tied a season-high with four RBI, while Deric Fabian established a new career-best with three runs batted in.
Coach Kevin O’Sullivan said that the Gators had a very pointed conversation on Monday. He let the team know exactly what they’re going to need to improve on for them to accomplish their goals. It was only one game against a low-major opponent, but the response couldn’t have been much better against the Rattlers.
“Obviously, coming off the weekend, everything that could go wrong did go wrong,” O’Sullivan said. “The bottom line is Hunter [Barco’s] got to pitch like he’s been pitching. It’s just tough when you’ve got to use Ryan [Slater] in the sixth inning and then you don’t have him available for Saturday. The bottom line is our two starters have to be good.
“Offensively, five of our nine guys in the lineup had off weekends. They were .130 or something between five of those guys. We talked about team offense. It’s about quality at bats. Young hitters sometimes get caught up; they determine the success of their at bats on base hits. There’s quality at bats that we had with hit by pitches and walks, getting the leadoff man on, moving runners up. We just made some mistakes. It’s subtle things that have cost us.”
Florida (19-10, 3-6 SEC) jumped on Florida A&M starter Dallas Tease right away in the first inning. Jud Fabian doubled down the left-field line with one out and scored on Langford’s single through the left side.
The Gators used some wildness by Tease to tack on four runs in the third. Colby Halter led off with a walk, and Jud Fabian followed with a dribbler down the third-base line. Third baseman Camden Hart inexplicably picked the ball up instead of letting it roll foul, which allowed Fabian to reach on an infield single.
Back-to-back walks to Sterlin Thompson and Langford plated the first run of the inning. A wild pitch during Riopelle’s at bat allowed Fabian to score. Riopelle lined a 3-0 fastball to right field for a sacrifice fly to make it 4-0.
Later in the inning, Rivera lined a full-count pitch from reliever Zach Morea into the left-center field gap to score another run.
The Gators blew the game open with six runs on seven hits in the fourth. Both Fabian brothers hit solo shots, marking the first time that they’ve homered in the same inning this season. Riopelle later hit a three-run homer into the UF bullpen in right center on an 0-2 breaking ball. Deric Fabian eventually collected his second RBI of the inning with a single off of Raylan Wagner to make it 11-0.
Florida scored its final two runs against Tre Turner in the seventh. Guscette hit an RBI double down the left-field line, and Deric Fabian lofted a sacrifice fly to center.
Meanwhile, the Gators’ pitching dominated the Rattlers (12-18, 6-3 SWAC) through seven innings. Pogue, who entered the day with seven walks and no strikeouts in just 2 1/3 innings this season, tossed three perfect frames with no walks and three strikeouts. Because he was on a pitch count, he was eligible to receive the win despite not pitching five innings. It marked his first win in 776 days.
“[The injury] kind of hit me pretty quick, but you can’t really dwell on it,” Pogue said. “From the time I got hurt to the time I had surgery was probably a week and a half. Coming back, I just tried to be the best teammate I could until I was able to get back on the mound. Coming back this season was really exciting, even though I didn’t have the first couple starts that I wanted to. Just trusting the process and not worrying so much on the outcome.”
Pogue’s command and velocity were both much better in his third start of the season.
“I’m thinking he was a little more consistent with his fastball,” O’Sullivan said. “It looked like it was 90-92 [miles per hour] for the most part. The command is starting to come on a little bit more. The secondary pitches were better, but it’s going to take some time. He certainly was better tonight. It was good to see him with his velocity starting to get back a little bit.”
Nick Ficarrotta gave up just one hit and no walks in his two innings, and Tyler Nesbitt and Philip Abner both threw hitless innings.
The Rattlers took advantage of some continued struggles by Timmy Manning to score three runs in the eighth. Two of the runs were unearned because of a throwing error by Manning on a comebacker.
Blake Purnell gave up a first-pitch single in the ninth but ended the game with a strikeout and a 6-4-3 double play.
The Gators will open their series against No. 2 Arkansas on Thursday at 6.
“You expect Arkansas to play hard,” O’Sullivan said. “They’re playing really good defense. They have three good starters. They’ve got a guy in the back end that they trust. Their bullpen is a little bit older. They’re playing good, but I would expect Arkansas to be like that every year. I’m sure they’re going to come in here knowing we’ll be prepared to play.
“That’s the other thing we talked about [on Monday]. It’s not who we are playing. We’ve got to focus on ourselves. We can beat anybody on our schedule, or we can lose to anybody on our schedule. We’ve got to focus on our team getting better and identifying what our strengths and weaknesses are. We’ve got to make our strengths even better and try to make our weaknesses not weaknesses.”