Facing blazing fastballs, Florida State's bats fell silent. Can the Seminoles awaken their offense to counter Wake Forest's elite pitching in ACC play?
Coming off a loss to in-state rival and No. 23-ranked Florida on Tuesday night, the No. 20 Florida State baseball team (15-3) needs to regroup in a hurry as they will travel to No. 12 Wake Forest (15-2) for a weekend series.
What did FSU learn from the adversity they experienced in Gainesville?
Against the Gators (13-3), the Seminoles managed just six hits, left eight runners stranded, and were held scoreless over the last five innings to snap a nine-game winning streak.
Florida’s pitching staff was throwing hard and fast, in the mid-90s and close to 100 mph. The only thing the Seminoles could do was stand in the batter's box, frozen, and listen for the break in the sound barrier as the ball smacked the catcher’s mitt. They heard the pitch before they saw it.
After taking an early 2-0 lead, the Seminoles bats went back in the rack and stayed there until it was time to load up the team bus for what had to have been an excruciatingly long ride back to Tallahassee.
When the bats are asleep, the only way to really overcome that is to have command and control from the mound. At times, the Seminoles looked like they had Nuke Laloosh on the bump: pitches all over the strike zone, no pinpoint control.
So how can the Seminoles overcome this poor outing headed into conference play? As a top-15 program, the Demon Deacons have a pitching staff similar to Florida's that throws with major-league velocity. FSU’s hitters must refrain from trying to do too much against a fastball you can only hear and cannot see.
In his weekly press conference, FSU coach Link Jarrett said this about the Demon Deacons Friday-night starter, Blake Morningstar, who's 0-0 with a 3.45 ERA:
“Good movement on the fast ball, good breaking ball. He's gotten better. Everything has ratcheted up a little bit. Um, so when you look at this pitching staff as a whole, I mean, he's one part of what has been a dominant, dominant staff. Our approach has to be a little bit better. I think that's one thing we've struggled with in this early part of the season is some of the younger guys and the inexperienced guys like latching on to approaches to try to manage the stuff that you seem, and this is high- octane stuff on the mound. Their relievers, their starting pitchers are very complete.”---Florida State Baseball Coach Link Jarrett
Injuries and inexperience have plagued the Seminoles this season, despite their 13-3 record. This is the start of conference play, and the Seminoles need better pitching, i.e. more than one pitch. Just throwing fastballs without any breaking stuff, like they did against Florida, will be a disaster for FSU as they get into the meat of the 2026 schedule. Waking up the bats for a barrage of timely hits would help also.
The Seminoles' three-game series against the Deacons will take place at David F. Couch Ballpark in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. First pitch on Friday is set for 6 p.m. ET, with Game 2 on Saturday at 4 p.m. Sunday's finale is set for 3 p.m. ET and will be broadcast live on ACC Network.
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