FSU completes sweep of Miami, historic regular-season sweep of rivals
Entering Saturday, it had been 64 years since the Florida State baseball team swept Florida and Miami in the same regular season.
I guess it's time to reset that streak.
The 10th-ranked Seminoles (30-5, 10-5 in ACC) beat rival Miami again on Saturday, 6-4, at Dick Howser Stadium to complete a sweep of the Hurricanes (16-19, 6-12) and a 4-0 rivalry week which included a 19-4 win over Florida Tuesday.
The Seminoles will finish the regular season a perfect 6-0 against Florida and Miami, winning the six games by a combined margin of 67-30. It's just the second time since the inception of the FSU baseball program in 1948 that the Seminoles won all of the regular-season games against both the Gators and Hurricanes.
It's a statistic FSU head coach Link Jarrett didn't know until he was told in his postgame press conference.
"It's good. We're playing good baseball and that says a lot about it," Jarrett said after Saturday's win. "That is not an easy thing to do. This week is not easy. You can go back as far as you want, it's not easy to stack like this."
The difference in the close result was a big day from FSU third baseman Cam Smith. He opened FSU's scoring with an RBI double in the first inning and extended the lead in the third inning with a two-run homer, his ninth of the season.
Smith finished Saturday's series finale 2 for 4 with two runs and three RBI. He finished this rivalry week with multiple hits in all four games (nine on the week) along with seven runs and four RBI.
He gave much of the praise for his big week to the fans at Howser. FSU set a three-game-eries record with 19,157 total fans attending the Seminoles' three wins over Miami this weekend.
"They were loud behind me," Smith said. "I love to hear it. It gets me fired up. I give the props to the crowd, want to tip my cap."
Marco Dinges also added an insurance run in the eighth inning with his ninth homer of the season, a solo shot that led to Miami first baseman Jason Torres being ejected from the game while Dinges was rounded the bases.
FSU catcher McGwire Holbrook, who was not playing Saturday, and left fielder Edgardo Villegas were each ejected later that inning as well when Holbrook came out of the dugout irate about Villegas throwing a ball hard into FSU's dugout after recording the third out of the inning.
"Unfortunately in our sport right now, there's a lot of stuff that is going on that is extracurricular within the game. I don't know exactly what happened, but I think it was brewing all weekend..." Jarrett said. "Unfortunately, our sport right now is a little too engaged that don't really reflect how the game should be played and some of the unsportsmanlike stuff. I'm not saying it was us, them, I'm just talking big picture. We need to try to contain this."
FSU had nine hits in the win, seven of which were extra-base hits as the team had five doubles and two home runs.
After Brennan Oxford rose to the occasion Friday night, it was another FSU bullpen vet, Andrew Armstrong, who stepped up Saturday. He entered the game with one out in the top of the fifth and recorded the final 14 outs for the Seminoles.
In his third relief appearance of the week, Armstrong began by inducing a double play to get out of a jam he inherited and then really got rolling, retiring 13 of the next 14 batters he faced, coming one out away from his first save of the season.
"It felt good. We've had some guys down. We had Ox step up big yesterday and I felt like I kind of needed to be me the next day so it felt good to be able to do that for the guys."
When Armstrong allowed a run in the ninth inning, FSU turned to Connor Hults, who retired the first batter he faced with a lineout to short to preserve the victory.
Armstrong allowed three hits and one run over 4.1 innings and Hults recorded his second save of the season, FSU's 12th as a staff.
With FSU down two starting pitchers this weekend, the bullpen combined to allow five earned runs over 14.1 innings across the Miami series, equating to a 3.19 ERA.
"A great response. Micah and I spent hours trying to figure out how to manage the personnel..." Jarrett said. "Pitch execution and their response to whatever role we give them is the key to the whole thing. The guys did it."
Up Next
FSU returns to action at Howser Tuesday hosting Mercer at 6 p.m. Then the Seminoles hit the road for an ACC series at Wake Forest which begins Friday at 6 p.m.