Midweek losses for Florida Baseball continue to pile up

Florida Baseball is currently 4-0 when it comes to winning a two-out-of-three series in 2024. They swept Columbia, and took two games from Miami, St. Mary's, and Texas A&M. While Florida still has some things to iron out with its main rotation, they have proven they are still a top ten team when in a series format.

But just like we don't talk about Bruno, we don't talk about what is happening in the middle of the week as the Gators have been dreadful and lost again last night to Jacksonville 8-7.

Florida Baseball: Can We Skip To The Good Part?

After winning their first two middle of the week games of the season against North Florida, the Gators have lost four of their last five middle of the week games. For context, Florida lost six games during the middle of the week over the previous four seasons combined. One more loss in the middle of the week would tie for the most the Gators have had since 2011 when they lost seven games.

That 2011 season ended with an appearance in the College World Series finals, so in one regard it is easy to write off the midweek struggles as something that doesn't reflect what is required to navigate a weekend series.

But that 2011 season also highlights what would be required once NCAA Regionals begin to make the midweek pitching woes irrelevant.

Florida went 3-0 in Regionals, beat Mississippi State in Super Regionals, and went 3-0 again at the CWS to make it to the finals. They were able to lean on their main rotation the entire way and didn't have to get inventive with solutions.

Bust as Florida has also experienced in other runs to the World Series, going 3-0 in Regionals is far from automatic. Last year after the Gators dropped a game to Texas Tech and had to play five games to escape Regionals, Cade Fisher and Ryan Slater had to make spot starts to keep Florida's season alive.

In 2017 when the Gators won it all, Kirby McMullen made his only career start in the win-or-go-home Monday game against Bethune-Cookman during Regionals.

And so the question is for Florida is if they were to drop a game during Regionals, do they have the arms to allow them to escape?

It is still a long season and time will tell, but even though they seemingly have the bats to hang around, one would have to think right now that if Florida doesn't go 3-0 they are not overcoming a loss in Regionals.