The Daily Nole

FSU’s Sands Not Expected to Miss Significant Time

Ken Lanese/FSU athletics

With Florida State’s ace Tyler Holton done for the season, the Seminoles got another scare in Friday night’s 7-1 loss to Duke at Dick Howser Stadium.

Junior starting pitcher Cole Sands left the contest Friday after four innings of work. After a 3-run first, Sands had seemed to be settling in nicely before walking off with a trainer prior to the start of the fifth inning. After the game, head coach Mike Martin called it “shoulder tightness”, but does not think the injury is significant.

“He should be OK,” Martin. “We’ll sit him down for a whole week and hopefully, he’ll be ready to go at Boston College.”

After a couple rough starts against Notre Dame and North Carolina, Sands came into Friday’s contest with a lot of momentum from wins over Louisville and Georgia Tech. Despite the disappointing rough first inning, Sands looked to be on the verge of giving Martin and staff another quality start.

If there was a bright spot from Friday night, Martin said, it may have been the way Austin Pollock performed in relief of Sands. After being removed from his role as the Sunday starter, Pollock kept FSU in the game on Friday night by throwing shutout frames in each of his first four innings. Martin may have left Pollock in for too long as the Blue Devils got to the Seminoles for four runs in the ninth to put the game out of reach, but Pollock did his part to help preserve the bullpen for the final two games of the weekend.

“I thought the lefty pitched very well,” Martin said. “That might have been the only positive.”

With Friday’s loss, the Seminoles have lost a season-high four straight games. Over those four games, FSU has managed just eight total runs. Prior to that, Florida State had scored at least six runs in 13 of its previous 16 games. FSU was just 2-for-17 with runners on base Friday and hit into three double plays.

“You have to look at the way you played to give away a couple runs,” Martin said. “That’s certainly something that’s on my mind.”

FSU will look to end its skid in the middle game of the series with Duke on Saturday. First pitch is scheduled for 2 p.m. EST and the contest will air on ACC Network Extra.

“We’ve just got to play better,” Martin said. “We’ve got to play with more of a lot of things.”

Mike Ferguson is the editor of The Daily Nole. Follow Mike on Twitter @MikeWFerguson

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