There are certain benefits that teams like Florida State reap early on in each college baseball season.

For one, their home stadium is available for games, something that may not be the case in large swaths of the country due to lingering winter weather conditions.

Head coach Link Jarrett has certainly taken advantage of that with how he has aligned the Seminoles' 2025 schedule. FSU's first 25 games of the season -- nearly half the 54 scheduled games -- are set to take place in the state of Florida. And 19 of those 25 are being hosted inside the friendly confines of Dick Howser Stadium on FSU's campus.

The Seminoles won't leave the state for a game until a trip to Notre Dame on March 28 through 30.

That extended homestand of sorts continues this weekend for the No. 9 Seminoles (4-0) when they play host to Penn for a three-game series which begins Friday at 5 p.m.

"Clearly, the weather here, when you go north of here and you look at what's going on in the Mid-Atlantic and the middle part of the country in general, we're fortunate that we're going to have a chance to actually play in good conditions," Jarrett said Thursday. "There aren't many places in the country this weekend, when you look at the map, that are conducive for baseball and we're one of them."

Jarrett admitted during his Thursday press conference that he's now working on the 2028 schedule and that there could be a few early-season road trips in the next few years that he believes will help the program with a bigger challenge early in the season.

But even this year when FSU spends all four weekends of non-conference play at home with teams from outside the major conferences, there are some challenging teams coming in.

James Madison, who FSU swept last weekend, was an at-large team in last year's NCAA Tournament. Penn, which will begin its season in Tallahassee this weekend, has won the Ivy League each of the last two years and made the regional final of the Auburn Regional in 2023.

JMU currently ranking 27th in RPI despite being swept by the Seminoles is a big part of why FSU currently ranks third nationally in RPI behind just Tulane and UCLA.

"These are quality teams and that helps your schedule. You want to have quality opponents..." Jarrett said. "Having teams that need to escape (the weather) a little bit and come down, they're quality programs, they're run by good men, that's what I look for."

It sounds like junior catcher Jaxson West is likely in line to make his 2025 debut behind the plate at some point during the Penn series this weekend.

Jarrett admitted during FSU's first weekend series that the veteran catcher was a bit banged up. He was in the lineup for each of FSU's first four games but only working as the designated hitter, with Dartmouth transfer Nathan Cmeyla and true freshman Hunter Carns catching two games each behind the plate.

"He's in better shape to (catch). He took in and out and ran around and did all that stuff. He should be available. We'll know after we get through today, how he is..." Jarrett said of West on Thursday. "The plan is for him to be out there this weekend. Now when and why, then you get to do some more strategic planning for what lineup matchups may work best.”

West had his first hit of the season in Tuesday's 6-2 win at USF after starting the season 0 for 11. Jarrett doesn't see those early struggles as a reflection of him being less than 100%, though, instead citing some poor luck on West's part.

"Of all the players in the lineup, he's probably had as many quality at-bats and just driven balls to center field with not much to show for it," Jarrett said.

Some less good immediate news that Jarrett shared Thursday is that sophomore pitcher Hudson Rowan is going to miss a couple weeks after suffering a "mid-body injury" in his season debut last Saturday vs. JMU.

"It's not a serious issue, but he's down and these things take time and you don't want it to piggyback into something else so we'll slowly work him back in there," Jarrett said of Rowan. "Poor guy had worked so hard and was in a good spot, unfortunate, but these are some of the things that happen in this game."

No. 9 FSU vs. Penn

When: Friday, 5 p.m.; Saturday, 2 p.m.; Sunday, 1 p.m.

Where: Dick Howser Stadium

TV/Radio: ACC Network Extra/100.7 FM in Tallahassee

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