Aggressive offensive approach paying dividends for FSU baseball
Gone are the days of Florida State baseball's offense being known nationally for its patience.
Being among the national leaders in walks on an annual basis was a hallmark of the Seminoles' program under legendary head coach Mike Martin Sr.
During his playing career for Martin as a shortstop in the early 1990s, Link Jarrett certainly fit that mold. He walked at least 27 games in each of his four seasons as a Seminole, finishing his four-year career with 129 walks to 127 strikeouts and a .364 on-base percentage.
Early in his time as the head coach at his alma mater, however, that hasn't been the Seminoles' path to success under Jarrett.
With two weeks left in the regular season entering Tuesday's home game vs. Jacksonville (6 p.m. on ACC Network Extra), the No. 8 Seminoles (35-10, 14-9 in ACC) have walked just 209 times. That's the second-fewest walks drawn in the ACC so far this season.
To be fair, it's already an improvement from the underwhelming 2023 team, which walked 181 times in 54 games while striking out 474 times. Still, it would appear this is shaping up to potentially be the fourth straight season in which FSU doesn't reach 300 walks as a team, something the program previously had done in each season from 1978 through 2019.
There are a few differences with this year's team from the last few, though. For one, strikeouts are also drastically down for the offense. FSU enters this week with 325 strikeouts (7.2 per game), 12th most out of 14 ACC teams and nearly 100 behind ACC leader Wake Forest (420).
After the Seminoles averaged more than 550 strikeouts over the last three seasons, they are on pace to come in well below that mark this season.
Some of that can certainly be attributed to the Jarrett effect. His teams have had success limiting strikeouts wherever he's been during his head coaching career.
A bigger factor, though, may be how aggressive Jarrett has let this FSU team be at the plate. It seems logical that FSU's strikeout and walk numbers are done so severely this season because a large segment of FSU's lineup has a great deal of success attacking early in at-bats and not getting into leverage counts in or against their favor.
"I see the personality of this team and when you look at the personality of the team, that's comprised of how these different hitters go about their business," Jarrett said last week. "There are some guys that are just so distinctly different in how they manage the at-bats and I've had that in a lot of the teams that I've had through the years. Some guys are a little bit more eager early in the count, whether that's a by-product of their overall pitch selection and vision of what they see. Some guys can get away with that because of their physical strength."
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FSU enters this week near the top of just about every offensive category amongst ACC competition.
The Seminoles are second in the ACC in doubles (104), third in slugging percentage (.567), third in home runs (86), fourth in batting average (.317) and fifth in runs (401). They are the only ACC team in the top five in all five of those categories.
So it's clear that FSU's offensive approach, while not what has historically brought the Seminoles success, has been working this season.
The downside of FSU's aggressive approach can be allowing opposing pitchers to get into a groove and keep their pitch count low if the balls hit into play early in counts find gloves.
But Jarrett knows better than to try and fix what is working for the Seminoles this season, taking them from well outside the NCAA regional hosting conversation at the start of the season to likely a national seed at this point in time.
"I do like the balance we've had since the season started. We do get a little bit reckless at times and you'll chew through some innings with five, six pitches in some cases. But you've seen those same guys hit balls in the trees and have incredible at-bats and do damaging things," Jarrett said. "I think you have to manage that delicately this time of year and focus on the guys that need to clearly make some improvements with that. You get a little bit greedy and hope everybody can keep getting better."
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