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2024 Gator baseball

Solid win. I’ll take it. Interesting to see Cade Fisher close it out. Few decent bullpen options emerging. Think I’d keep slater in the pen also as he has been lit up in both starts so far. Good to see Purnell get an inning. With the bullpen struggling, he should get more of a look for some innings
 
We're going to have to find ABs for Donay. He hits .230 like everyone else, but at least when he hits it the ball goes out. Our lineup is 6 deep max at the moment, and that's counting Heyman who's hitting .236.

Think we have to just live with Robertson's bat in CF. At least he can play the position defensively and the other guys can't hit anyway.

Tanner can play catcher and slide Heyman to DH, but again Heyman is hitting .236!
 
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bradleygator said:
We're going to have to find ABs for Donay. He hits .230 like everyone else, but at least when he hits it the ball goes out. Our lineup is 6 deep max at the moment, and that's counting Heyman who's hitting .236.

Think we have to just live with Robertson's bat in CF. At least he can play the position defensively and the other guys can't hit anyway.

Tanner can play catcher and slide Heyman to DH, but again Heyman is hitting .236!
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Good assessment. I think Heyman will come around. He was a decent hitter last season.
 
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bradleygator said:
We're going to have to find ABs for Donay. He hits .230 like everyone else, but at least when he hits it the ball goes out. Our lineup is 6 deep max at the moment, and that's counting Heyman who's hitting .236.

Think we have to just live with Robertson's bat in CF. At least he can play the position defensively and the other guys can't hit anyway.

Tanner can play catcher and slide Heyman to DH, but again Heyman is hitting .236!
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Donay is a catcher, but is not as good behind the plate as Garrison or Heyman. He hit 2 HR's vs. Florida A&M, but has not been good whenever he's faced good pitching. He started the season as DH and lost that job after a couple of weeks and has seen little playing time since. Heyman was on the All-SEC Freshman team last year, hitting .314 with 12 HR, 39 RBI and was a major contributor to last year's national runners-up. He was a solid back up to B. J. Riopelle at catcher and started the season as our starting catcher. But Garrison is so good defensively, that as long as he hits a little bit, Garrison will be behind the plate. Heyman plays 1st when Cags pitches and he's a solid first baseman. Other games, he's the DH and will be there all season. No doubt, he's been in a slump, but he's a super talented player that O'Sullivan has a lot of confidence in and has already proven himself against big time pitching. Robertson is an enigma. A truly great defensive centerfielder, he started the season as the hottest hitter on the team and then couldn't do anything at the plate and has seemed to have lost his confidence. Liberty transfer senior Jalen Guy has been getting a lot of starts in CF, but is only hitting .172. Guy is getting the start tonight at Missouri.
 
Couple of well hit balls not going out. Think cags will have to catch one or we’ll have to string some hits together.
 
Last year's great team struck out a lot. But this year, it's gotten ridiculous at how poor our appraoch is at the plate. Good to see Luke get a HR. He hit the ball hard twice and maybe this will get him going. But now Ty Evans is in an 0-12 slump. Just pitiful at the plate tonight. The pitchers weere solid, holding them to 2 runs in 11 innings and stranding 16 base runners. But it was the offense tonight that failed us. Horrible against the worst team in the SEC.
 
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Sully needs to take a good look at how they’re coaching these hitters. Twice a week you look and these guys have 2 hits, 4 hits. 17 strikeouts, 15 strikeouts all the time. These guys are better hitters than that.
 
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No way is this Gator baseball team a Top 10, or maybe even a Top 20 team. Pitching has been good the last 2 games and the offense failed miserably. Losing to Missouri hurts badly and will drop us a lot in the rankings and RPI. Need to at least salvage 1 win Sunday.
floridagators.com

No. 6 Florida Comes Up Short at Missouri in Game Two - Florida Gators

Jac Caglianone hit his 15th home run and Liam Peterson set a career-high with nine strikeouts.
floridagators.com floridagators.com
 
Yeah I never would have thought offense would be this team’s problem but here we are. Need to get one today. Have a feeling we’re going to be grinding for .500 in the SEC all year.
 
Cags didn't have it today. Gave up 7 runs in 1.1 innings - his worst outing of the year by far. Bottom of the 7th tied 8-8. We may get swept by MISSOUIR!!!!
 
People have said Missouri is a bad team. Well, they just swept the Gators so what does that make us?? It's the SEC - everybody is good, no matter their record. Every game matters and you better bring your A game or you will get beat. We had a horrible start from Jac, battled back to take a 10-8 lead to the 9th. We had bases loaded, nobody out in the toip of the 9th with Evans, Shelton & Heyman up. All 3 struck out. Then Missouri scores 3 in the bottom of the inning, the last 2 with 2 outs, and beat us 11-10 for the sweep. We're not 17-14, 6-6 in the SEC. FSU midweek in Tallahassee, then South Carolina at home. These guys better get it together and re-set themselves FAST or the season could go south in a hurry.
 
ocalaman said:
People have said Missouri is a bad team. Well, they just swept the Gators so what does that make us?? It's the SEC - everybody is good, no matter their record. Every game matters and you better bring your A game or you will get beat. We had a horrible start from Jac, battled back to take a 10-8 lead to the 9th. We had bases loaded, nobody out in the toip of the 9th with Evans, Shelton & Heyman up. All 3 struck out. Then Missouri scores 3 in the bottom of the inning, the last 2 with 2 outs, and beat us 11-10 for the sweep. We're not 17-14, 6-6 in the SEC. FSU midweek in Tallahassee, then South Carolina at home. These guys better get it together and re-set themselves FAST or the season could go south in a hurry.
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We had bases loaded one out with Shelton and Cags up earlier in the game and didn’t score. Terrible series, basically gave away whatever leeway we had. We’re going to have to scrap our way into a regional now. If we’re going to host we’re going to have to win some series I wouldn’t expect. UK swept Bama this weekend and I believe is 27-4.
 
bradleygator said:
We had bases loaded one out with Shelton and Cags up earlier in the game and didn’t score. Terrible series, basically gave away whatever leeway we had. We’re going to have to scrap our way into a regional now. If we’re going to host we’re going to have to win some series I wouldn’t expect. UK swept Bama this weekend and I believe is 27-4.
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D1 Baseball has dropped us from #6 to #24 in their rankings, plus we're now #31 in RPI. Quite a tumble and if they don't get a quick reset the season could get away from them in a hurry.
 
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As of this morning, UF's team batting average is .267, next to last in the SEC. We have struck out 295 times, only South Carolina & Missouri have more. On base percentage is .384, next to last, also. We are 3rd in HR with 67. We've drawn the 3rd fewest walks with 140 and have the 2nd fewest stolen bases with 18. Our fielding is tied for 2nd best at .982. Pitching wise, we're now next to last (ahead of Auburn) in team ERA at 5.88. We're last in saves with only 3. We've walked the 2nd most batters with 144 and are 5th in K's with 344. So next to last in BA & ERA. Where do we go from here?
 
I think we will figure out the pitching. Sully is figuring out who to put where, and the young guys are showing some improvement. Defense, we are average whatever the fielding percentage is. We’re pretty solid in the outfield, and Cags and Kurland are solid on the right side of the infield but the left side is functional at best. I don’t like to criticize any college kid, but Thomas is not an SEC 3b defensively and he hasn’t had a hit in a month. Shelton has been decent at SS but is a little clunky.

Offensively, what can you say? It’s looking like the worst lineup of the Sully era. The approach is terrible, we’re down 0-2 seems like every at bat, and when these guys get fastballs, they swing right through them.

Good to see Heyman getting it together a bit. Shelton, the HRs are great but you can’t hit .260. We need those two and Shelnut and Ty Evans to really put pressure on the defense. For Kurland, his focus should be getting on base. He swings out of his shoes at everything and then when he connects it goes to the warning track.

Big part of the issue at Mizzou was that the ball wasn’t carrying. Gators squared up three or 4 balls on Friday night that you could tell they thought were gone and they ended up routine flyouts and we had no answers.

Not sure you can just change a team’s approach at bat in the middle of the season. I’d tell half the lineup, you’re taking the first two pitches period but that doesn’t seem to be the gameplan.

Gators are just going to have to pitch and hit balls out and hopefully scrape their way into a regional. This team does have a lot of fight, I’ll give them that.
 
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So pretty clearly, we have zero depth. I think sully looked at Neely and Slater as pull the ripcord options if the freshmen got lit up but neither one has really been a stopper. Neely has been decent and will probably improve on Friday nights as he stretches out, but Slater has been a disaster. I’d get him back in the ‘pen and hope he can rebuild some value because we could certainly use the innings.

In some ways, these last 4 games have been a positive, because there’s no more illusions about being a national seed or whatever. We are going to have to claw our way into a regional by winning series we shouldn’t.

After this year, sully really needs to take a look at the approach he’s coaching offensively and pitching, because we’ve got all the same problems we had last year: too many strikeouts; noncompetitive pitching for innings at a time. And we just do a lot of dumb stuff. Put ourselves in bad counts at bat, walking/hitting the bottom of the lineup. Slater had both hitters in the first inning 0-2 and they both end up scoring. And particularly with the pitchers, they’re more talented than that.
 
This is 2 years in a row where these heralded pitchers, mlb draft picks if they don’t go to UF, just do not pitch to their rep. And the guys from last year aren’t really improving. That used to be the program’s strength all these young arms coming firing out of the bullpen. For whatever reason these guys just keep getting hit hard.
 
Gators starter for Saturday is “TBA.” Some speculation Pierce may be healthy? I can’t imagine sully would start the guy on an SEC Saturday without pitching an inning. Peterson hasn’t been great although I think trending positively and showing really good stuff. But who else do we have?
 
Yeah I heard we’re trying to win tomorrow to avoid the longest losing streak since 1973(!). That’s where we’re at. At this point I’m just hoping to scrape together enough sec wins to get into a regional somewhere. We’ll need every win we can get so might as well get one tomorrow.
 
Heyman swings through another 89 mph fastball. Heyman, Kurland and Shelton are the letdowns in our lineup. Everyone else is doing what you’d expect. Thought those three guys would be all SEC level offensive players.
 
Cags strikes out 2 with fastballs in between walking the bases loaded throwing breaking stuff all over the place. Smdh.
 
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