Florida State (16-6) took game 1 of the double header against Notre Dame (9-11) in convincing fashion (7-1) but couldn’t take the series, falling in game 2 (12-3). Losing games against seemingly inferior competition keeps a team from winning a conference title and hosting coming post-season time, but FSU has not shown themselves to be a good team this year.

3 Up

• Although he started off a bit shaky due to a couple of walks and less than stellar defense Drew Parrish had a very good game. The senior went 6 strong innings striking out 9, walking 2 and giving up 0 runs. Notre Dame was able to threaten early getting 2 men on base in both the 1st and 2nd innings but Parrish pitched around it well. The Fighting Irish are not the best team at the plate in the ACC but starting pitching has been quite poor for FSU this year and the pen has not been reliable in the last 2 weeks or so. Either way, it’s nice to see Parrish pound the zone and miss bats like he is capable of.
• Oft maligned Gage Hutchinson was a straight up beast today. Entering game 1 with an ERA at 6.75 Gage dropped his ERA to a nice 2.00 pitching 3.2 innings of scoreless ball giving up just 1 hit and 1 walk on the day.
• Elijah Cabell had himself quite a day. The freshman went 3-7 with a walk, double and HR. Robby Martin had a good first game, which was 2 consecutive quality games for the freshmen and Mike Salvatore chipped in as being a pest at the top of the lineup.

3 Down

• Base running wasn’t great. FSU had a runner picked off of 2nd and 2 caught stealing. Being aggressive on the base paths is fine but you have to pick your spots and with the power that FSU has at the plate giving up potential runs like that is not good.
• Fielding was not very good. In the 1st inning of the 1st game FSU failed to handle a fly out in foul territory and the runner eventually reached. They also committed 4 errors on the day, which will make your pitchers look even worse than they are. FSU continues to put themselves into bad situations and so they lose more games than they should.
• Unlike Parrish, CJ Van Eyk’s struggles have continued. CJ has the best stuff on the team but he cannot seem to get out of his own head. Giving up 7 runs on 3.2 innings against most teams is bad, against Notre Dame it’s down right pathetic. To be fair, only 4 of those runs were earned but Van Eyk walked 6(!) batters to go along with a wild pitch and hit by pitch. FSU’s pitching staff has a long ways to go to look anything remotely close to what they should.

Game 1 Box Score

Game 2 Box Score

Florida State looks to take the series against the Fighting Irish Sunday at 11 am.