Through 6 ½ innings, the No. 14 Gators were in an excellent position to win Saturday’s finale against No. 23 Georgia and salvage the series.
They had scored five runs in the top of the fifth to take a 6-2 lead, and they still held a 6-3 advantage going into the bottom of the seventh after freshman lefty Philip Abner pitched a clean sixth inning.
Then, the dumpster fire that is the Florida bullpen imploded again. The Bulldogs scored eight runs in the seventh inning off of Abner and Tyler Nesbitt to take an 11-6 lead.
BT Riopelle cut the deficit back down to three with a two-run homer in the top of the eighth, but Georgia added three more runs off of Karl Hartman in the bottom of the inning to turn this into a blowout. Georgia defeated Florida, 14-8, to finish off the series sweep.
The bullpen killed the Gators (18-10, 3-6 SEC) in all three defeats. On Thursday, Ryan Slater and Blake Purnell blew a two-run lead and got walked-off in the ninth. On Friday, Nick Ficarrotta gave up three runs in the eighth to turn a close game into a rout. Then, on Saturday, they pulled off perhaps their biggest collapse yet this season.
Colby Halter and Sterlin Thompson both had two hits for the Gators, while Ben Anderson, Cole Tate and Connor Tate all had three hits for the Bulldogs. Will Pearson got the win on the mound by pitching two scoreless innings.
The seventh inning from hades began with back-to-back walks from Abner, which continued a recent trend of the pitching staff giving away free passes at the worst possible times.
Nesbitt took over on the mound with the top of the order due up. He threw strikes, but they definitely weren’t quality strikes. Anderson lined a single to right to load the bases with nobody out. Nesbitt struck out Cole Tate and got Corey Collins to pop out. Suddenly, the Gators were on the verge of getting out of a bases-loaded, nobody-out jam without giving up a run, which is exactly what Georgia’s pitcher did to them in game two.
Instead, the Bulldogs (22-6, 6-3) basically got in a round of batting practice against Nesbitt with two outs, as the next five batters all notched hits.
It all started with a costly defensive mistake. Connor Tate hit a groundball deep in the hole at short. Josh Rivera fielded the ball cleanly and gunned a throw to first. His throw sailed over Kendrick Calilao’s head and allowed two runs to score to cut the lead to 6-5. An accurate throw may have gotten Tate out. At the very least, it would’ve limited the damage on the play to one run.
Instead, Georgia kept building on the momentum. Josh McAllister hit another infield single to short to tie the game, and Parks Harber gave them the lead with a single to left. Garrett Blaylock blasted a thigh-high 0-2 fastball over the wall in right-center field to make it 10-6. Three pitches later, Fernando Gonzalez hit a similar pitch over the wall in left to finish the onslaught and make it 11-6.
“Nesbitt came in and did an unbelievable job,” coach Kevin O’Sullivan said. “Really the only bad pitch he made was to Blaylock. He threw two really quality changeups and tried to throw a fastball in because he moved up in the box, and he left the ball over the plate, and it’s a three-run homer.
“They scored a couple more there. Then, once again, [in the eighth], they got to a 3-0 count. I said, ‘Watch here, there’s going to be a green light,’ and, sure enough, there was a green light on a 3-0 count, and there was another three-run homer. We continue to fall behind.”
While the game ended as horribly as possible for the Gators, the start wasn’t very pretty, either. After Thompson’s RBI single off of Nolan Crisp put the Gators up 1-0 in the top of the first, starting pitcher Garrett Milchin didn’t record a single out in the bottom of the inning. A walk, a wild pitch and an infield single put runners on the corners in the bottom of the first. Another wild pitch scored the first run of the game.
Collins singled to left to put runners on the corners again, and Connor Tate ended Milchin’s day by crushing a double to right field to make it 2-0 and put runners on second and third with nobody out.
Brandon Neely entered in relief and was outstanding. He miraculously escaped the inning without further damage with a strikeout, a lineout and a groundout.
Neely then tossed four more innings after that and gave up just one run. He struck out five batters, gave up just three hits and didn’t walk anyone in a career-long outing.
“I thought Neely did a nice job,” O’Sullivan said. “He put us in a position to win the game and certainly the first half of the game.”
His strong performance allowed the Gators’ offense to put together a rally in the fifth. Calilao started things with a one-out single to left, and Crisp followed by walking Rivera on four pitches. Chandler Marsh took over on the mound, and the Gators greeted him rudely. Mac Guscette hit a double into the left-field corner to score a run.
With two outs, Halter hit a ball to right that Chaney Rogers misplayed. Both runners scored to give Florida a 4-2 lead. Jud Fabian followed with his league-leading 12th homer of the season to left center to expand the lead to 6-2.
Unfortunately, the bullpen wasn’t able to make that lead hold up, and the Gators are now way behind the eight ball in both the league standings and with regard to their postseason chances.
Next week will only be tougher for them. After a midweek tilt with Florida A&M, they’ll host currently ranked No. 2 Arkansas starting on Thursday.
“We have no choice at this point but to stay together,” O’Sullivan said. “Obviously, there’s going to be a lot of negativity about what’s going on, but we have to band together. We have a long way to go in this season. We have to get better. That’s quite obvious. We have no choice at this point but to get back home and have a good practice on Monday to get ready to play on Tuesday.
“We’ve got some really difficult weekends coming up. We’re certainly capable. We are going to go into every weekend thinking we can win, and that’s the bottom line. We can’t get caught up in the outside stuff. We’ve just got to stay focused on what we can control, [and] that is just trying to get better.”