Ahead 5-2 entering the eighth inning, Florida State baseball looked as if they’d finally pulled away from a St. John’s team that had a counterpunch for everything the Seminoles had thrown at them in game one of the Tallahassee Regional.
FSU was 35-0 in games when leading after the seventh inning, and Chris Knier had retired four straight Red Storm hitters. He looked to have shaken a rough sixth inning of relief, where he allowed two walks and a single, and quickly put St. John’s Dylan Fitzsimmons in a 0-2 count.
He couldn’t locate his putaway pitch to Fitzsimmons, who hit a solo home run and went 3-for-4 after entering the game for an injured Lewis Rodriguez in the second inning. The leadoff home run kicked off an eighth inning that saw St. John’s tie the game at five, thanks to an FSU team that failed to execute in the final two innings of the game and lost 6-5, sinking into the losers’ bracket.
“They deserved to win the game. I know the one inning went very sideways on us. There was a lot to unpack back there, I know that. With some of the things we were trying to block, I understand that was a difficult part of the game,” FSU head coach Link Jarrett said postgame.
“But the guys fought. This can still be achieved. It is very difficult from here, but it can happen.”
John Abraham, who hadn’t pitched since May 8, when he was injured in a game against Clemson, entered the game to relieve Knier in the eighth. He had no outs and inherited a pair of base runners, one at first and another at third base.
He struggled for command and threw a wild pitch on the second pitch of his outing, which scored a runner and moved another to second base. That led to another wild pitch, which moved Jayder Raifstanger from second to third base.
Abraham never looked settled, and catcher Hunter Carns had struggled to keep pitches in front of him against St. John’s, something that has been present throughout the season for the sophomore.
“He felt fine, he felt good. Having not been out there for a while, you are balancing, ‘Does he need to be out there to find it, or are we asking too much?” Jarrett said of Abraham. “The pitch count never made us feel he was over the top on that.”
Raifstanger eventually scored on a passed ball that ran past Carns’ glove and to the backstop to tie the game at five. The pitcher and catcher misfires weren’t a case of miscommunication, as both players had the calls from their pitchcoms, but Carns struggled to stay in front of Abraham, who couldn’t locate pitches outside of the zone.
“Some of the pitches are intended to be underneath the zone and intended to be in a blocking manner. Some are not. You have to react,” Jarrett said. “When you do get secondary pitches that are not where you think they are, you have to stay ahead of them and block it.”
Abrahm threw 38 pitches and likely won’t be available for the rest of the weekend. He hasn’t thrown twice in a weekend this season, and it was his first outing since his injury. He eventually worked out of a bases-loaded jam in the eighth inning, keeping the game tied and sending FSU to the plate.
However, the Seminoles’ misfires were not exclusive to the top of the eighth inning.
Gabe Fraser led off the bottom of the eighth inning with a single, and Carter McCulley came to the plate looking to lay a sacrifice bunt to advance Fraser to second base. McCulley failed to get the bunt down properly, fouling one off, but he did work himself into a 3-1 count.
However, he was issued a pitch clock violation, running the count full before he struck out swinging on the next pitch.
“We were doing the same thing the entire at bat until the clock violation put it full,” Jarrett said on the approach. “You just hope that is not part of the equation at this point in the season. You could tell he was trying so hard to focus, and everybody was yelling, and he was in his own world there getting ready to go. That’s tough, and you can imagine how he feels with that right now.”
The Seminoles stranded Fraser, one of nine runners left on base in the game, after Cal Fisher popped out and John Stuetzer lined out to center field.
It was a disastrous inning that opened a door for St. John’s to steal game one, which they eventually did with a Raifstanger RBI single in the ninth to put FSU into the loser’s bracket.
“Clearly not easy,” Jarrett said of falling into the losers’ bracket. “This is not the conversation that any coach wants to have on the opening day of this. But that is the reality of where we are.”
How to watch FSU baseball in the Tallahassee Regional
The Seminoles will face either Coastal Carolina or Northern Illinois in the losers’ bracket elimination game of the Tallahassee Regional.
The winner will play Sunday in an elimination game against the loser of the winners’ bracket game Saturday evening.
Liam Rooney covers Florida State athletics for the Tallahassee Democrat. Contact him via email at LRooney@gannett.com or on Twitter @__liamrooney.
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: FSU baseball’s 8th inning miscues fuel upset loss to St. John’s in Tallahassee Regional
Reporting by Liam Rooney, Tallahassee Democrat / Tallahassee Democrat
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