FSU Baseball: First Half Filled with “Should’ve Beens”

Florida State’s 2017 baseball season is more than halfway over and a team that many thought could contend for that coveted national championship has been an utter disappointment so far.

Fielding woes have been the story over the last two days as the Seminoles were swept by North Carolina after blowing leads in each of the last two games. The 3-game sweep came after FSU was defeated by rival Florida for the 14th time in 17 tries.

Whether it’s been fielding, an up-and-down offense or a shaky bullpen, the only thing that FSU has seemed to do consistently over the first half has been break fans’ hearts. With 28 games in the regular season remaining, Florida State sits at 18-11 and just 6-6 in ACC play. That’s the worst 12-game start in ACC play since 2002.

Florida State now sits on the cusp of falling out of the top 25 after ascending to as high as No. 1 in the D1Baseball.com Poll earlier this season. In the Collegiate Baseball Poll, which ranks 30 teams, the Seminoles are nowhere to be found.

As they prepare for another difficult week that includes two games against Florida Gulf Coast and three games at North Carolina State, hope for another solid season is dwindling and for good reason.

Looking back at the first half of the season and Florida State’s 11 losses, it’s hard to pick out which one was most gut-wrenching. Unfortunately for the fan base, letdowns and meltdowns have become routine.

Twice over the first half of the season — in the opener against Virginia Commonwealth and on Feb. 21 against South Florida — FSU managed just one hit. In the contest with USF, Florida State actually took a 2-0 lead to the ninth inning before five FSU pitchers combined to allow four Bulls’ runs on just one hit in the final frame.

The heartache doesn’t stop there. In fact, it was only getting started.

On March 14, the Seminoles wasted a splendid start from Andrew Karp in which he struck out a career-high 11 batters in seven outstanding innings. The FSU offense failed to supply a run in a 1-0 loss to rival Florida, which marked the third straight time it had been shut out by the rival Gators.

The next night at Florida Gulf Coast, FSU got off the schneid with two runs in the first inning, but trailed 3-2 by the time the frame had come to an end. When the evening was over, the Eagles had prevailed 5-2 while the Seminoles had left 15 men on base.

Three days later at Virginia Tech, FSU looked well on its way to taking the series. The Seminoles won 9-2 the day before and held a 10-2 lead over the Hokies in the fourth inning. Virginia Tech responded with 11 unanswered runs before holding off the Seminoles, 13-12.

Virginia Tech took the series on March 19 by handing FSU its worst shutout loss in program history, 17-0. It marked the third time this season that FSU had been shut out. That’s more than Florida State was shut out during the regular season for all of last year.

Fast forward to this past weekend against North Carolina.

After dropping the opener on Friday night by a 3-1 score, the Seminoles were one out from a combined no-hitter on Saturday in a 2-0 game. After a fifth FSU error of the evening allowed the tying run to reach base for the Tar Heels, Michael Busch, who came in hitting .169, broke up the no-hitter with an RBI single to right field that forced extra innings, where FSU would commit another crucial error.

North Carolina scored three runs in the 11th to win 5-2. All five Tar Heel runs in the loss were unearned.

Desperate for a win, Florida State looked to be in the midst of showing some much-needed resiliency on Sunday. After falling behind 2-0 in the first, FSU answered with six straight runs before North Carolina scored five of its own to take the lead.

With the score knotted at 7-7 in the ninth, Busch again played the role of villain with a 2-run home run as the Tar Heels completed the sweep. In a big home series against a highly-ranked North Carolina team where FSU had to play well, more than half or nine of the Tar Heels’ 17 runs over the three games went unearned.

Looking back on the first half of the season, the Seminoles let so many wins slip away. The bright side — if one wants to call it that — is that FSU is really close to having three or four more wins. The down side is that good teams find ways to win. The Seminoles seem to be finding ways to lose.

18-11 at this point in the season is hardly a death sentence. The Virginia team that won the College World Series two years ago was 19-12 after 21 games. What is discouraging is that FSU hasn’t really gotten to the meat of its schedule.

Against teams currently ranked in the Baseball America Poll, FSU is 0-6. In those six games, Florida State has scored just a total of 13 runs and the majority of those came on Sunday.

While FSU still ranks in the top 25 nationally in runs scored, the Seminoles have been able to exaggerate those numbers by feasting on lesser opponents. Nine or half of Florida State’s 18 wins have come against teams who currently have a losing record.

Over the next 28 games, Florida State will take on 15 teams who are currently ranked by Baseball America, including seven contests with top-10 teams. FSU is still more likely than not to make the NCAA Tournament, but at this point, hosting a regional is a real long shot. The Seminoles’ streak of 39 consecutive seasons with at least 40 wins is also in real jeopardy.

To be clear, there is a lot of baseball remaining and a couple series victories over ranked teams could change the team’s mindset. With an offense struggling against quality pitching, an inconsistent bullpen and trouble in the field, the reasons for optimism at this point are very few.

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