Midweek madness strikes as Florida is stunned by Jacksonville

Story by Rafael Casero

The No. 21 Florida Gators baseball team was stunned yet again on Tuesday night at the Condron Family Ballpark, where the Jacksonville Dolphins beat the Gators 7-5.

A close and competitive game completely unraveled for the Gators in the seventh inning. Jacksonville’s Sammy Mummau broke the game open with a double down the left field line, starting a late rally for the Dolphins to take their first lead of the night, 4-3. On the next at bat, Roger Vergara tacked on another run by driving in Sammy Mummau with a sacrifice fly.

The eighth inning was not kind to Florida as the Dolphins got runners in scoring position off of a few fielding errors, which extended their lead to 7-3 and put the Gators in an insurmountable hole.

This marks the second game that Florida has dropped against Jacksonville this season and only the third loss overall in mid-week games (10-3 record). The Gators have now lost three games in a row in what has been an up and down season for the team.

The start of the game looked promising for Florida as starting pitcher Cooper Walls retired the side in only eight pitches. The Gators opened up with a huge first inning, starting off with a leadoff home run by Kyle Jones.

His dinger opened up the bats for the top of the order as Brendan Lawson reached base on an error and Blake Cyr singled to left. Karson Bowen then delivered a single up the middle, which plated Lawson. Colton Schwarz then drove in Cyr after an error misplayed by Sammy Mummau, driving up the score to 3-0 at end the first inning.

Walls continued to cruise until the third, when the Dolphins found themselves in the scoring column with a sacrifice fly by Roger Vergara to drive in their first run of the game. Derek Bermudez followed with a double, which drove in a second RBI, and then Sam Grunberg singled to tie the score.

Walls came off the mound for Caden McDonald at the start of the fourth inning and the game went into a deadlock and became a pitching battle. Jacksonville’s starting pitcher Ben Baker-Livingston found his groove after the rough first inning, only allowing three runs on six hits through six innings.

Florida had one last push in the bottom of the eighth with a homer by Cyr, marking his fourth straight matchup with a home run. Bowen then doubled and Schwarz plated him on a line out to make it 7-5.

Despite the last push, the Gators fell short falling to Jacksonville as the team secured its second win in Gainesville. UF coach Kevin O’Sullivan shared his thoughts on how the game should have played out.

“To be honest with you, I thought we would have better at bats. He was throwing the fastball and a cutter, pretty reminiscent of Saturday. We scored three in the first, then we don’t score again until the eighth,” O’Sullvain said.

O’Sullvain made no excuses after the loss and said it falls on execution and energy. The Gators fall to 28-14 as they look to shift their focus onto the No. 7 Texas A&M.

“Their top two hitters are two of the best hitters in the country with Grahovac and Sorrell. They are very offensive,” O’Sullivan said.

Florida hosts the Aggies at home in a three-game series this weekend. First pitch of the series opener is on Friday at 6:30 p.m.