Florida Gators Baseball Series Wrap Up: Once again, 17 good innings

Ten games into the season, Florida Gators baseball has established itself as a contender to make it to Omaha come June. Florida is hitting the ball at will and that was on display once again during its two-game home-and-home series against the Jacksonville Dolphins.

But much like its meltdown against USF last week, Florida has a glaring weakness that may become its downfall if it doesn’t get straightened out.

Florida Gators Baseball: I think I’ve seen this film before

Tuesday’s game in Jacksonville had the scoreline of a Big 10 football game rather than a baseball game. Every Florida starter reached base at least twice during their 18-8 drubbing of the Dolphins. Wyatt Langford was 4-5, Jac Caglianone was 3-6, and when Cade Kurland hit a grand slam in the 5th inning to make it 9-1 it looked like Florida Gators baseball was on its way to end the night early.

Ryan Slater pitched four innings to start and only gave up one run. Then Nick Ficarrotta came in to open the bottom of the 5th with the 9-1 lead and promptly gave four runs right back.

Florida kept hitting though as Langford and Caglianone both had home runs and despite the troubles with the bullpen it was an easy night for Florida.

But we wrote prior to the series that the Gators were going to need its bullpen to step up after a disappointing outing against Cincinnati, and unfortunately, that didn’t happen last night.

Florida’s bats were once again on fire and Caglianone open the bottom of the first with another home run to give him eight on the season.

Mind you Jacksonville has nine as an entire team.

A three-run error by the Dolphins gave Florida a 5-3 lead heading into the 6th inning, and that’s when the implosion happened for Florida.

Fisher Jameson let the first four batters in the inning reach before he was replaced by Philip Abner. Five of the six batters he faced reached base before Anthony Ursitti cleared the mess and got the final two outs.

The damage was done though and while Florida’s bats stayed hot, the Gators fell 10-8.

To their credit, Ursitti, Chris Arroyo, Clete Hartzog, and Brandon Neely all combined for 3.2 innings and only allowed one run between them.

With a big series against Miami coming up this weekend, this is where some of the parallels to the softball are creeping in. Like softball, Florida Gators baseball is hitting at will but doesn’t seem to have arm depth. As evidence by their 8-2 record, this doesn’t mean that the Gators can’t win a lot of games this season.

But as the Gators begin to take on some of the higher ranked teams in the country that can do a better job at taming their bats, Florida is going to have to have a couple arms from the bullpen emerge that it can depend on to hang around until the bats do show up.

It’s a long season though, and if Kevin O’Sullivan can figure out an arm or two he can trust, Florida has the makeup of a squad that can make it to the College World Series.