The Florida State Seminoles (42-22) fell to the Michigan Wolverines (48-20) in its second game of the College World Series by a 2-0 final score. Tonight’s loss continues the streak of the Seminoles failing to go 2-0 in Omaha since 1989.

Three up

• Florida State’s bullpen did everything they could to try and keep the Seminoles in this one. Chase Haney pitched great and kept the Seminoles within reach of Michigan. In relief of Van Eyk, the right-hander, pitched 2.1 innings, struck out two, walked zero, and didn’t allow a hit. Jonah Scolaro picked up right where Haney left off striking out all six batters he faced in the eighth and ninth innings.
• On a night where positives were hard to come by, Mike Salvatore had two of the ’Noles three hits.. Freshman Mat Nelson had the other hit and now has three of Florida State’s eight hits through two games in Omaha.
• The Seminoles aren’t eliminated yet and will have an opportunity to keep its championship hopes alive with a victory over Texas Tech on Wednesday.

Three Down

• A solo home run in the top of the first off CJ Van Eyk’s second pitch of the game seemed to shake up the Florida State starter quite a bit and put the ’Noles behind early, 1-0. The sophomore hit 62 pitches as the Seminoles entered the top of the fourth and struggled with his fastball command. It quickly became apparent that the right-hander would not pitch deep into the game like Florida State had hoped. He lasted 4.2 innings before he was replaced by Chase Haney after reaching 106 pitches and allowed another run to put the Wolverines ahead, 2-0.

• Florida State’s offense struggled to produce through the first four innings, opposing pitcher Tommy Henry, threw only 46 pitches. It wasn’t much better the remainder of the game as the left-hander finished with just 100 pitches in a complete game shutout. There is nothing wrong with the aggressive mentality by FSU hitters, but the issue was with the approach. The ’Noles consistently tried to pull pitches on the outer half of the plate instead of driving them to the opposite field, the latter approach worked extremely well for the Wolverines against Van Eyk. Since the start of the LSU series, Florida State batters are a combined 24 for 139 (.173) and have plated only one run in the last 26 innings.
• While the execution by the players tonight was not great the coaching staff bears some responsibility too. The plate approach has to be better for Florida State if they are going to advance further in this series, they cannot continue to try and pull pitches in an attempt to hit the ball out of one of the biggest ballparks in the country. While the bottom half of the lineup has changed from game to game, the top half has not. With a dominant left-handed pitcher on the mound tonight, Mike Martin, needed to break up the string of lefties. This could have easily been done by moving Flowers up a spot to the four hole.

Box Score

Game Thread

With tonight’s loss, Florida State finds themselves in the elimination bracket and will face Texas Tech on Wednesday night. If they win then they would need to defeat Michigan twice to advance to the CWS finals.