Florida State’s ERAs look more like interest rates. This is also the cost of business when inexperienced pitchers face top-25 teams.
While Allison Royalty (0.54) and Mimi Gooden (1.56) have relatively lower ERAs in their first few weekends of the 2024 season, Emma Wilson’s ballooned to 5.09, Makenna Reid's to 7.88, Ashtyn Danley's to 10.14 and Madi Balk's to 21.00. A pitching staff that’s light on experience learned some difficult but not unexpected lessons after going 1-2 in the Clearwater Invitational with a win over No. 9 Stanford and losses to No. 20 UCLA and No. 4 Georgia.
“I expected us to get exposed a little bit,” FSU coach Lonni Alameda said. “And I also wanted to put ourselves in a lot of different positions. There’s times I could have gone to Allison or an experienced pitcher, but I decided to get Mimi in there, I decided to get other people in there, to try and extend Makenna, try to do some things that I need to see what we’re capable of against really good hitting teams so that I know what we need to work on.
“I kept saying, ‘Stay with me and let’s work through this so that I can learn and we can learn so we could be better.' ”
Alameda said some of the scores in Clearwater were startlingly high. The winning team scored 10 or more runs in 10 of the 23 games in the rain-shortened tournament.
One of FSU’s problems is that it scored 10 runs on Friday and 10 runs again Saturday only to lose both games. Going back through games in the Alameda Era, it’s unusual to see an opponent score 10 runs (it’s never happened in back-to-back games or losses).
Alameda is curious about how much of this reflects FSU softball’s pitching staff, a tournament with big bats on ranked teams or a combination. The Seminoles also had a costly error in the fourth inning against UCLA, contributing to eight runs.
“It was just kind of crazy down there in general for the amount of runs that were scored just in all teams,” Alameda said. “… There’s a little bit of, ‘We got to figure ourselves out on the pitching side and defensive side on making some plays and stop the bleeding.’ The other part is, ‘What just happened down here? Was there a wind tunnel? What is going on?’
“It was super cool that our team never gave up. We were in all of those games inning by inning, which is crazy when you look at the scores. But we make a couple baserunning mistakes or we do this and all of a sudden it could be a 15-14 game. It was like a boxing match down there.”
The Seminoles (5-3) will get more opportunities to learn in the coming days as they play doubleheaders against FIU (6-5) on Thursday, Charleston Southern (6-4) on Friday and Nicholls (6-5) on Saturday in the Dugout Club Classic in Tallahassee.
Alameda said she and the pitchers have reflected on the games, wins and losses, and grading them. Pitchers like Danley (12 walks in 9.2 innings) and Reid (nine walks in eight innings) in particular have struggled with their control, leading to a number of their rough outings. Reid in particular is still searching for a groove after enjoying a 0.97 ERA in 40 games (four starts) as a freshman in 2023.
But Alameda also argued in favor of a “tight strike zone” as it gives the Seminoles an opportunity to hit. She acknowledged some pitches were borderline although they could be executed a little better. Some of that, yes, is experience.
“We do this thing called well-better-hows,” Alameda said. “And so we debrief every single game. And we go back and watch the games. We grade ourselves on the intent of what we were trying to do vs. the outcome of what happened. For us and our growth and the youth we have in the circle right now with experience, to me that’s more important this first month than actually what is happening. Are we going to miss some spots? Yes, we are.
“We got taken advantage of that with some good hitters. But there were some pitches that were really close that could have gone either way. … We just need to be better at executing pitches and that’s what we need to work on.”
Thursday
FSU vs FIU - 5 p.m - ACCNX
FSU vs FIU - 7:30 p.m - ACCNX
Friday
FIU vs Nicholls - 10 a.m.
FIU vs Nicholls - 12:30 p.m.
FSU vs Charleston Southern - 3 p.m. - ACCNX
FSU vs Charleston Southern - 5:30 p.m. - ACCNX
Saturday
FIU vs Charleston Southern - 10 a.m.
FIU vs Charleston Southern - 12:30 p.m.
FSU vs Nicholls - 3 p.m.
FSU vs Nicholls - 5:30 p.m.
Sunday
Nicholls vs Charleston Southern - 10 a.m.
