Florida baseball’s weekend sweep of South Carolina puts Gators in charge of own destiny

The Florida Gators completed a rain delay-filled weekend at Founders Park in Columbia, South Carolina, with a three-game sweep over the hosting Gamecocks.

Poor weather affected all three games in the series, forcing a mid-game stoppage in each of the first two contests. Rain delayed Friday night’s 9-5 win just over three hours, and Liam Peterson’s start lasted just seven pitches. The second delay forced a complete stoppage on Saturday and a partially shortened doubleheader ran on Sunday, 22-3 and 8-0. The continuation game started as a nine-inning game and finished as such, but the series finale went a planned seven innings due to the weather.

Florida dominated the series to move two games under .500 in conference play after winning 10 of the last 12 games. The climb after a 1-11 start to the SEC schedule hasn’t been easy, but Florida (33-16; 11-13) has done well to capitalize on opportunities, which didn’t happen in March. Sunday afternoon’s onslaught is the perfect example. The Gators led 1-0 when the continuation game started and burned through a pair of the Gamecocks’ extra bullpen arms with 16 runs in the two innings ahead of the final game.

Any series that ends with a 31-run scoring margin is a fun one. Here’s a closer look at how Florida took its fourth straight series on the diamond.

Game 1: Florida 9, South Carolina 5
Peterson didn’t even make it through the first batter before the Arkansas field personnel stopped the game. A whole warm-up and go signal for six pitches and to leave the count full for a three-hour wait. Every team in the SEC deals with weather. Florida has had its problems, but the Gators make regular schedule changes to accommodate.

To allow the game to begin on a day when the weather was expected, and to call it six pitches into the visiting team starter’s first inning, feels like a level of gamesmanship too overt to be ignored, but there’s no way to prove that and no true punishment. Peterson still got his work in later on and Florida got the win, so it all worked out.

Alex Philpott took over for Peterson and finished off the first at-bat with a walk. Both the walk and subsequent run go on Peterson’s record, but Philpott was the problem here. He couldn’t find the zone and was slowing down his fastball in search of more control. Philpott lasted just five batters before turning things over to Luke McNeillie. South Carolina scored three times in the inning. All three reached base with Philpott on the mound, but only two went on his box score. McNeillie gave up the RBI single to make it 3-0, but he inherited that runner on third.

Florida comes back
South Carolina’s starter Bobby Stone stayed warm through the delay and retook the mound. He got through the order the first time without giving up a run, albeit with three hits, but Florida got to him in the third for a run — Luke Heyman doubled down the left field line to score Justin Nadeau. McNeillie gave the run back in the bottom of the third, but he was good with four strikeouts over 2 2/3 innings and needed to come out with an uncertain workload for the rest of the weekend.

The ‘Cocks decided to leave Stone in for another inning after getting out of the third without too much damage, and he almost made it through. Hayden Yost took a two-strike, two-out, 91 mph fastball over the right field wall for a two-run homer to cut the deficit to one. Caden McDonald took over for McNeillie and delivered a quick nine-pitch fourth to get the offense back on the field to deliver the big blow.

Florida put up five on the scoreboard in the top of the fifth. Heyman struck again for a game-tying solo homer off left-hander Jackson Stoucie in relief of Stone. A pair of walks pushed Stoucie’s pitch count north of 25, and a dropped pop-up into shallow right-center extended the inning. Ty Evans took advantage with a grand slam, putting Florida out in front by four.

Bullpen locks it down
McDonald gave up a lead-off homer in the bottom of the fifth, but a one-run response wasn’t good enough. Billy Barlow finished the inning before both bullpens settled in to finish off the game. Each team had opportunities to score, typically through multiple walks or the occasional single. The Gators made good on their threat in the eighth, scoring off a sacrifice fly, but that’s all the scoring that happened after the deciding fifth inning.

South Carolina had a good chance to fight back with the bases loaded in the seventh. Multi-inning closer Jake Clemente took over after the first of three consecutive singles to start the frame. After allowing two hits of his own, Clemente struck out the side to escape the jam and got out of trouble in the eighth, too. He worked around a leadoff single in the ninth to secure the win and record his sixth save.

Game 2: Florida 22, South Carolina 3
The first 17 outs of Saturday’s game got played before the rain washed away the day. King was rolling, but the radar had other plans. Just over the 50-pitch mark, King left the game on pace for a five-inning shutout, but he wasn’t dominating, per se. Fortunately, Blake Cyr drove in Boser in the first to give Florida a lead before the weather came.

After a near 24-hour delay, Florida and South Carolina picked things up and Peterson was back on the mound. A full day of rest is enough after only seven pitches, and he didn’t need to go too deep with King getting through 2 2/3 innings the day before. Peterson got Florida through the sixth, even though he didn’t have his best stuff. Four walks and only two strikeouts, three runs on three hits and a home run for good measure.

South Carolina certainly didn’t see the best version of Peterson, but the Gamecocks didn’t capitalize as much as one might expect. The homer was a solo shot and only one of the four walks scored despite getting two errors from Florida’s defense. Peterson left the game with a man on who eventually scored, but he earned the win with Florida up 6-3 after seven innings.

Florida got to Dylan Eskew right away, adding three in the top of the fourth. Yost lined one over the shortstop’s head to score two, and Boser doubled to right center to bring him in. Heyman homered off him in the fifth, a solo shot, building a 5-0 lead. Heyman hit another solo home run to lead off the seventh, his 13th overall and SEC-leading 10th in conference play. McNeillie allowed a run that Peterson was responsible for to score in the bottom of the seventh, but it was all Gators from there.

Gators drop 22 in baseball
If Florida didn’t put the game away with a five-run eighth inning that made it 11-3, doubling the score with an 11-run ninth did the trick. Things got ugly and hard to watch for South Carolina’s bullpen. The Gamecocks burned four different bullpen arms in the final two innings of a likely loss that only got worse as things dragged on.

Matthew Becker left after Lawson drove in Wilson with two outs in the eighth. Zach Russell came in to stop the bleeding and got a routine ground ball to shortstop, but a bobble left everyone safe and the inning continued. Cyr walked to load the bases, and Ty Evans cleared the bases for three unearned runs. Donay added an RBI single to score Evans for good measure.

The ninth inning started with a pair of walks from Russell, and a Boser single to left scored a run and put men on the corners with no outs. Pitching change. Aydin Palmer took over for South Carolina and promptly walked the first three batters he saw, scoring two more runs. 14-3, Florida, for those trying to keep track.

Palmer got a pair of back-to-back strikeouts, but another walk brought in another run and Roman Kimball to throw. Kimball had little success. Wilson drove in a pair with a single to center field and then Kimball walked two more, reloading the bases and giving Florida an 18th run. Lawson smashed his ninth home run of the year and third grand slam of the year to put a ribbon on things, 22-0.

Jake Clemente came in after McNeillie to close things out over three innings when the score was still 6-3. After having his way with the South Carolina lineup, Clemente (2 IP, 0 H, 1 BB, 4 K) gave way to freshman Carson Montesdeoca for some work. Montsdeoca threw 10 fastballs, all clocking in between 90-92 mph.

Game 3: Florida 8, South Carolina 0 (F/7)
This was not the weekend for pitching chaos to ensue, but things mostly worked out with King and Peterson. However, McNeillie and Clemente were burned and both Barlow and Philpott had also thrown already during the weekend. A shortened seven-inning game on the backend of a doubleheader helps a bit, but the Gators needed to figure something out for Game 3 without a defined third starter available.

Enter Pierce Coppola, who hasn’t touched the field since the first day of March. Coppola has been working toward a recovery since suffering a shoulder injury and is finally back in the mix for Florida. He looked good but was fastball-heavy to start his outing. He sat 90-02 mph and reached back for 94 a few times with two strikes. He flashed the slider in the left-on-left matchup. A few of them didn’t find the zone, but there’s some firm horizontal movement there that’s still there. Coppola’s swing and miss ability is his draft factor, and it seems he still has it with two in the inning.

Florida’s offense failed to give Coppola a lead in the first after putting men on the corners with no outs, but Evans made good on things with a solo home run to lead off the second. Jackson Barberi took over to pitch the bulk of the game with Coppola on a pitch count. He looked good from the get-go, starting his outing with a pair of strikeouts on what was called a slider but looks more curveball-ish on film. The fastball ran up to 95 and sat 93-94 mph.

Barberi saw a baserunner reach in each of three-plus innings of work. Gavin Braland, Cayden Gaskin and Nathan Hall all doubled off him but never scored. He hit Max Kaufer in the fourth and quickly induced a double play, too. The Gators gave Barberi a bigger cushion to work with in the fourth with two runs — Yost sacrificed bunted to third and Wilson singled up the middle, scoring Cyr and Evans, respectively.

Christian Rodriguez took over in the fifth to close out the game. He went a career-long 2 2/3 innings, allowing just one hit. He did not walk or strike out anyone, but he did hit one batter. Rodriguez was all changeup, setting up the fastball when it’s usually the other way around. He didn’t get any swing and misses with two strikes, but this was as effective as Rodriguez has been.

Yost hit a two-run homer, his second big fly of the series and third of the year, in the sixth to give C-Rod some run support. Lawson singled in Wilson shortly after to make it 7-0. Donay homered and Wilson doubled in Yost in the seventh to put a bow on things.Everything has gone to plan since Florida hit that low point at 1-11 in conference play. Beating USF on Tuesday is a must, but preserving the arms for Texas next weekend is arguably more important. Series wins at Texas and against Alabama over the next two weeks mean 15 wins and a .500 finish in conference play for Florida. It’s a delicate line to toe, though. The Gators need at least two SEC wins to be in the conversation for a spot in regionals. A collapse is more than possible at this point.

Florida hosts USF on Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. ET and then heads to Austin for a three-game set with the Texas Longhorns starting Friday at 7:30 p.m.