Florida Baseball: Gators overcome Little League field to defeat FSU

Florida baseball has a beautiful new stadium that could rival any of the Spring Training stadiums around Florida and Arizona. It has charm, it has a family-friendly berm, and it has mostly normal dimensions.

Florida State however plays on a field that looks like it belongs at your local low-level Little League and despite the quirks of the ballpark, the Gators were able to overcome a slow start to power past the Seminoles.

Florida Baseball: Chain link fence

Florida fell behind 5-1 after four innings. The defense for the Gators wasn’t sharp as Jac Caglianone had a hard time handling throws to first base. In the second inning, Florida gave up a run after an inning-ending double play went awry after Josh Rivera’s throw to Caglianone got away.

Florida gave up two more extra runs in the fourth inning when the potential third out at home was overturned after a replay review.

Along the way, Rivera hit a double in the fourth inning that if not for FSU’s chain link fence in right field would have been a home run. He scored anyway off a Ty Evans double later in the inning.

Eventually, Florida got its bats going. One could debate if Rivera’s double would have been a home run given that FSU’s field is 320 down the line compared to Florida’s 330, but there is zero mistaking where Colby Halter’s sixth-inning triple would have landed in any other non-Little League park.

https://twitter.com/GatorsBB/status/1638341888762871812?s=20

FSU has this stupid fence because their stadium backs up to a road and they want to limit cars getting hit. So build netting, not that hard.

Beyond that, the fence doesn’t even look good. Is FSU so cheap that they can’t even bother coming up with a more ascetically pleasing design?

The answer is yes because it’s been like that since the dawn of time.

As it was, Florida was able to overcome and break through in the eighth inning. The Gators sent 10 batters to the plate, five of them came home, and it was 9-5 for the good guys after Rivera’s two-run single.

Fun fact, Rivera now has 37 RBIs on the season and leads the nation in the category.

Caglianone, after going hitless in the series against Alabama, was 4-5 with three RBIs. Nick Ficarrotta, Phillip Abner, and Brandon Neely combined for 5.1 innings and gave up zero runs between them.

Florida now moves on to a series against Ole Miss before taking on FSU again next week at a real ballpark in Jacksonville.