Three up, three down: Montgomery, offense roll in baseball’s win over UCF

Tallahassee, FL - The Florida State baseball team was held to just one hit through the first three innings before the bats came alive in the fourth. The freshmen would get the offensive party started with Jaime Ferrer’s single and James Tibb’s RBI double. The Seminoles would send another nine batters to the plate in the inning. In total FSU would record six runs on six hits in the fourth including Alex Toral’s sixth jack of the year. Carson Montgomery was equally impressive on the mound with a line of 7 IP, 4 H, 2 ER, 8 K, 2 BB. The Seminoles would tack on insurance runs in the sixth and seventh and cruise to a 10-2 win.

Game Thread

Box Score

Three up

Carson’s career night

Sophomore Carson Montgomery showed why he was such a highly rated prospect coming out of high school. He’s always displayed flashes of his potential but has struggled with control and making it through the order a third time. Tonight, it all clicked. Montgomery was in control for seven innings, a career high for him. There was one mistake to a red-hot Gephry Pena, but Montgomery would record four clean innings and keep the Knight’s bats guessing all night. The key for Montgomery has always been consistency and tonight he showed it by throwing 68% of his pitches for strikes.

FSU bats bring the ducks home

After struggling to advance runners on base in the NC State double header, the Seminoles bats found all the right gaps in tonight’s win. With runners on base, the Seminoles were 8/19 and picked up 4 RBIs when there were two outs. The fourth inning was the highlight for the offense but FSU strung together productive at bats in the sixth as well with a walk, bunt, sacrifice bunt, and score on wild pitch. It was good to see the ‘Noles score via power and small ball.

D-e-f-e-n-s-e

It’s been noted in past articles that FSU’s defense is a tale of two teams. FSU has seen sloppy games with multiple errors, passed balls, and questionable decisions. Then there are nights like tonight, where the defense was always perfectly placed and made every play look easy (outside of a ninth inning error when the game was out of hand and the backups were in). Colton Vincent once again made a difference behind the plate with several picks and blocks. This was definitely another night of all three aspects of FSU’s game clicking.

Three Two down

FSU batters still striking out

As impressive as the offense was tonight, FSU batters still struggled with strikeouts. The Seminoles combined for 13 strikeouts including three from Reese Albert and four from Logan Lacey (seven LOB). It’s an area that FSU still need to show improvement.

The weather gods are undefeated

What was originally meant to be a two-game series turned into your standard one and done midweek matchup. Wednesday’s game was cancelled due to inclement weather, marking FSU’s fourth postponed or rescheduled game of the season.

Up Next: Florida State hosts the Duke Blue Devils for a weekend series.