Gator Baseball CWS Semis: Gators bow out

[GatorInGeorgia]

Yeah, finishing 4th in the nation is a terrible year???!!!! Fire the coach and start revoking scholarships. Goofball!!

Hey Goofball, when you have the top talent in the nation but you can’t field routine infield ground balls, can’t throw to 1st base accurately, can’t back up 1st base in case of errant throws, can’t run the bases correctly and generally look like an average high school team that’s a problem...4th in the nation or not! It’s called underachieving and it’s nothing to be proud of!

 

[Ancient Reptile]

I realize that we lost in the cws for a variety of reasons: poor fielding, lack of hits with risp, etc., but how odd is it that the pitcher of the year, player of the year (several organizations I think) comes into the cws with one loss and gets both losses here? He was assigned the loss both times wasn't he?

 

[Durty South Swamp]

Dont know what was going on in singer's mind but what we saw wasn't fatigue or some undisclosed injury limiting him. Dude psyched himself out, maybe put too much pressure on himself this time around. Maybe they all did. Or maybe once we clinched the conf they just put it on cruise control and fell asleep at the wheel, then promptly got crushed by ms st and couldn't mentally dial it back in. Who knows? They were a great team for the vast majority of the year but they absolutely imploded when it mattered. Either way it was another great season and something most any team would salivate for. Go Gators.

 

[BNAG8R]

4 days rest is a lot different than 7 days rest. You can get your velocity back, but control can take longer. It’s not like he was horrible, he was just slightly off - getting behind in counts (which he did all night) makes for easier-to-hit pitches, and it’s just a vicious circle.

 

[rogdochar]

We are the Gator fans of this spectator sport. In stands, in front of TVs, all that is done to enjoy having a chance at winning. We were unable to even compete. The last third of the season we became a 50/50 team. How many weeks did that faltering go on - with no coaching correction ? I understand JJ's diminishment. But an entire team of players I don't.

Guess their pitcher was major league. Campbell was 5x better than Singer - was he rated that high or did our defused confused batters make him look so great ?

Our W-L record was like most of the teams winding up in Omaha. So, that makes it a successful season - bet our players don't feel successful ? Am I alone in not being able to bypass our CWS performance to absorb pleasure from those many early wins. I can't feel that pride. Am I solitairily coo-coo ? I'm not mad, just utterly deflated, sad.

 

[Jbossgator8]

Great season by our guys. Not how we wanted to end up but only one team ends up happy at the end of the CWS. We finish in the Top 4 so that is pretty good out of 297 teams. Would you think other top 10 teams would want to trade places with us?? Stanford, Ole Miss, Clemson, UGA, FSU, and NC St were ALL ranked in the top 10 pretty much all year and didn't even make it out of Regionals. Would you rather be those teams?? Would you rather be supposed powerhouse Miami who finished 28-26?? Obviously we are going to complain any other way if we didn't finish #1. Heck some of us complained last year cause we only batted 222 in the CWS and yet STILL won it all. Gotta give credit to our team who battled all year with the target on their back. We already know how tough it is to win back to back. Before Sully we had only been to the CWS 5 times. He has already taken us there 7 times and 4 in a row now. Not something I thought was possible given our spotty history in baseball. Sully has built us into a top 5 program when we were barely a top 25 program. Something to be proud of. GO GATORS!!

 

[Fodderwing]

We don't have to worry about Sully becoming the next Mike Martin.

Long Live Coach Sully, Long live the Gators!

Dilly! Dilly!

 

[Durty South Swamp]

Dilly! Dilly!

 

[MADGator]

Hey Goofball, when you have the top talent in the nation but you can’t field routine infield ground balls, can’t throw to 1st base accurately, can’t back up 1st base in case of errant throws, can’t run the bases correctly and generally look like an average high school team that’s a problem...4th in the nation or not! It’s called underachieving and it’s nothing to be proud of!

I hear exactly what you’re saying and I probably feel just the same. Top four in the country is good, I’ll take it over scUMs and the holes year, but I’m disappointed in this team. Repeating is tough but this team had all the pieces. Look at the mediocre way they played the last half of the season, yet they still made it to the semi- final round! How far do they go if they take care of just one of the areas where they struggled? But they didn’t fix anything. You just don’t get this kind of talent on one team every year. It was a good year, but they left money on the table. So now we look forward to next year; a good core returning and good bunch of recruits coming in soon.

 

[Ocalaman]

A #1 seed has not won the CWS since 1999. Really difficult just to get to Omaha and we've been there 4 straight years. Incredible achievement. Texas Tech & Arkansas both had more players drafted than Florida - 11 each. Baseball is a game of streaks. Arkansas is on one and we weren't. This year's team didn't have the defense of last year's - Rivera behind the plate, Liput at 2nd & Guthrie at short. Throw in JJ's injury that put him out of commission for a month and it's easy to say that as talented as this year's team was it wasn't as good as last years. And how do you fix ability? What was O'Sullivan going to do? Who was better at 2nd than Reese? He tried Shifflet and that didn't work out. Who could he put behind the plate that was as good as Rivera? This team played above it's head the first 38 games and then came down to earth. Teams scouted Dalton and saw he struggles with sliders and curves so his batting averaged dropped 50 points. India went from .440 to .350, JJ gets hurt and he tried Greenfield, Girand (who was great in the Super Regionals) and then Smith. None as good as Schwarz had been, but who is was there to throw out there? No Rivera on the roster. Liput had been solid at SS, but he was not Dalton Guthrie. O'Sullivan is a great recruiter and a great teacher of the game. Are we at the point where if a national title is not won, we get pissed and bummed out? Not me. I'm proud of every male & female athlete who decides to become a Florida Gator and rejoice in their dedication and successes.

 

[ChiefGator]

I bet the players are way more disappointed than anybody here. These players are like my family, I support them no matter what. That said I can be disappointed, on to next year for this sport.

 

[FireFoley]

A #1 seed has not won the CWS since 1999. Really difficult just to get to Omaha and we've been there 4 straight years. Incredible achievement. Texas Tech & Arkansas both had more players drafted than Florida - 11 each. Baseball is a game of streaks. Arkansas is on one and we weren't. This year's team didn't have the defense of last year's - Rivera behind the plate, Liput at 2nd & Guthrie at short. Throw in JJ's injury that put him out of commission for a month and it's easy to say that as talented as this year's team was it wasn't as good as last years. And how do you fix ability? What was O'Sullivan going to do? Who was better at 2nd than Reese? He tried Shifflet and that didn't work out. Who could he put behind the plate that was as good as Rivera? This team played above it's head the first 38 games and then came down to earth. Teams scouted Dalton and saw he struggles with sliders and curves so his batting averaged dropped 50 points. India went from .440 to .350, JJ gets hurt and he tried Greenfield, Girand (who was great in the Super Regionals) and then Smith. None as good as Schwarz had been, but who is was there to throw out there? No Rivera on the roster. Liput had been solid at SS, but he was not Dalton Guthrie. O'Sullivan is a great recruiter and a great teacher of the game. Are we at the point where if a national title is not won, we get pissed and bummed out? Not me. I'm proud of every male & female athlete who decides to become a Florida Gator and rejoice in their dedication and successes.

This is a good post and I agree with most of it but would offer a different opinion on Sully's teaching of the game. I don;t think any reasonable fan is mad that we did not win it all, rather the mistakes that the team made on the field the last 1/3 of the season that caused frustrations. There is no doubt he is an excellent recruiter and holds his guys accountable. He takes care of his pitcher's arms And yes we hit more for power this year and I realize that is how the game is going, but one might think that a coach who values pitching as much as Sully, that more effort would be put into some of the small ball aspects. I look at Buddy Reed as an example and he was a guy that should have bunted a good portion of the time but did not. We small balled a run against TTech and I had not seen that in a while. The one thing that does not seem to ebb and flow are the baserunning mistakes. I know practice time is limited, but a smidge more attention to detail would go a long way IMO. Some poor fundamentals defensively could also be addressed. I realize you can't turn each hitter into Ted Williams nor every pitcher into Walter Johnson, but there are certain things that can be taught and can be that razor thin difference between a win and a loss.

 

[Ocalaman]

This is a good post and I agree with most of it but would offer a different opinion on Sully's teaching of the game. I don;t think any reasonable fan is mad that we did not win it all, rather the mistakes that the team made on the field the last 1/3 of the season that caused frustrations. There is no doubt he is an excellent recruiter and holds his guys accountable. He takes care of his pitcher's arms And yes we hit more for power this year and I realize that is how the game is going, but one might think that a coach who values pitching as much as Sully, that more effort would be put into some of the small ball aspects. I look at Buddy Reed as an example and he was a guy that should have bunted a good portion of the time but did not. We small balled a run against TTech and I had not seen that in a while. The one thing that does not seem to ebb and flow are the baserunning mistakes. I know practice time is limited, but a smidge more attention to detail would go a long way IMO. Some poor fundamentals defensively could also be addressed. I realize you can't turn each hitter into Ted Williams nor every pitcher into Walter Johnson, but there are certain things that can be taught and can be that razor thin difference between a win and a loss.

I agree with you on the small ball. The CWS color guys talked about it some during some of the games. Bunting isn't taught in high school and travel ball hardly at all and kids come to college not knowing how. The pros do very little bunting anymore (NL pitchers are about it) and very few college teams do it either anymore. It's an aspect of the game that is sadly going away and I agree that there are times that a sac bunt or a key bunt for a hit or squeeze can be the difference in a game. And we don't execute it well at all when we do try. As for baserunning, what I saw this year was just stupid mistakes by several players that has nothing to do with coaching. Just bad decisions in the heat of the game. And some were really, really dumb. Coaches are limited by the NCAA as to how many hours they can spend with kids and they have 11.7 scholarship to spread out among 27-28 players. That's tough. But I do wish we played more situational small ball.

 

[oxrageous]

But I do wish we played more situational small ball.

That's been the #1 complaint against Sully since he got here. He can field one hell of a roster, it's the in-game managing aspect that has been questioned for a while now.

 

[jeeping8r]

I coached 12 year old girls softball players that had better base running awareness than some of the things I saw UF do. That's about the only thing I can be bummed about, But I'm not at all......They got to Omaha and 270+/- teams didn't.
I was rooting for Stetson in the supers as Wife's cousin was their catcher (I think) many moons ago.

 

[oxrageous]

They got to Omaha and 270+/- teams didn't.

As the #1 team in the entire nation, I would sure as hell hope so.

 

[jeeping8r]

But 4 of the top 8 (as of May 21st) didn't make it.

 

[ChiefGator]

This is a good post and I agree with most of it but would offer a different opinion on Sully's teaching of the game. I don;t think any reasonable fan is mad that we did not win it all, rather the mistakes that the team made on the field the last 1/3 of the season that caused frustrations. There is no doubt he is an excellent recruiter and holds his guys accountable. He takes care of his pitcher's arms And yes we hit more for power this year and I realize that is how the game is going, but one might think that a coach who values pitching as much as Sully, that more effort would be put into some of the small ball aspects. I look at Buddy Reed as an example and he was a guy that should have bunted a good portion of the time but did not. We small balled a run against TTech and I had not seen that in a while. The one thing that does not seem to ebb and flow are the baserunning mistakes. I know practice time is limited, but a smidge more attention to detail would go a long way IMO. Some poor fundamentals defensively could also be addressed. I realize you can't turn each hitter into Ted Williams nor every pitcher into Walter Johnson, but there are certain things that can be taught and can be that razor thin difference between a win and a loss.

I bet most of the errors that were made are taught long before anybody gets to UF. Backing up at first base is something basic, as are some of the other issues the team had down the stretch.

 

[Left Coast Gator]

Hey Goofball, when you have the top talent in the nation but you can’t field routine infield ground balls, can’t throw to 1st base accurately, can’t back up 1st base in case of errant throws, can’t run the bases correctly and generally look like an average high school team that’s a problem...4th in the nation or not! It’s called underachieving and it’s nothing to be proud of!

That's what I'm talking bout...

 

[Ocalaman]

Good summation of the Gator season:
https://floridagators.com/news/2018...tors-fail-to-repeat-but-future-is-bright.aspx