No. 23 Florida State baseball vs Boston College: Game thread, preview, how to watch

The Florida State Seminoles (26-16, 11-10) are on the road this weekend in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. After dropping their midweek to Stetson, the Seminoles will look to complete their second consecutive weekend sweep against the Boston College Eagles (18-28, 4-20).

The Eagles are 3-7 over their last 10 games but one of those wins was against a ranked Notre Dame team. FSU holds a 37-8 edge over BC, including a 16-2 margin at Chestnut Hill. The Seminoles lost their last meeting 5-3 in April of last year. While the Eagles have struggled record-wise, the lineup can be boom or bust with six players recording five or more home runs so far this season. Parker Messick, slotted for his usual Friday role, dominated TCU last weekend with 14 putouts to help extend the Seminoles’ national lead to 521 strikeouts.

Boston College will start off Friday with Joe Mancini, who has been on a bit of a hot streak of late. He doesn’t strike out a lot of batters and will give up hits but he’s kept the run count pretty low the past few weeks against some good offenses. He went seven innings against NC State, Virginia Tech and Notre Dame and gave up less than three earned runs. Some of that might be fools gold as he did give up ten hits to Notre Dame and no runs.

Saturday starter Henry Leake has come out of the pen for most of the year but recently worked his way into the starting lineup. The move was paying dividends as he had decent to good starts against NC State and Virginia Tech but then gave up ten runs in five innings to Notre Dame. Leake does a good job of staying around the plate and forcing hitters to hit.

Boston College’s bullpen is pretty rough. As a staff they are giving up a batting average of .289 and an ERA of 7.12. Max Gleg has been a bright spot for the Eagles but he doesn’t tend to pitch for very long so expect to see him more as a matchup guy and probably not much more than an inning here or there.

The BC offense is much better than their pen but they do tend to strike out quite a bit. However, they do balance that out with a good amount of pop. Of note, Joe Vetrano has 13 home runs on the year with Cameron Leary contributing 15 to the cause. Leary also has an impressive 41 walks but also has 57 strikeouts, meaning he’s similar to FSU’s Alex Toral from a numbers standpoint.

Friday: Boston College 3, FSU 2

The Seminoles and Parker Messick jumped out to an early lead before Boston College’s pitching dominated. The bullpen imploded in the ninth as BC walked off FSU, 3-2.

Saturday 5/7, 2:00 PM

Probable Starters: TBD vs. RHP Henry Leake (2-2, 6.75 ERA)

How to watch: ACCN

How to listen: 100.7 FM in Tallahassee

Sunday 5/8, 1:00 PM

Probable Starters: TBD vs. TBD

How to watch: ACCNX

How to listen: 100.7 FM in Tallahassee

Boston College top performers

• DH Travis Honeyman: .362 AVG/ 5 HR/ 16 RBI
• C Parker Landwehr: .308 AVG/ 9 HR/ 36 RBI
• 1B Joey Vetrano: .328 AVG/ 13 HR/ 49 RBI
• RF Cam Leary: .254 AVG/ 15 HR/ 40 RBI

Tomahawk Nation will have updates in the game thread and on our Twitter.