Florida baseball didn’t have the 2022 season it expected to with a decent amount of returning bats and a top-notch recruiting class to bolster the pitching staff. With three games left to play in the regular season, the Gators need to take two of three games against the South Carolina Gamecocks this weekend to finish 15-15 in conference play.
The pitching staff has taken a step forward recently, but that comes after team ace [autotag]Hunter Barco[/autotag]’s season ended early with Tommy John surgery. [autotag]Brandon Sproat[/autotag] and [autotag]Brandon Neely[/autotag] have stepped up nicely, and it appears that [autotag]Nick Pogue[/autotag] has recovered enough from his own Tommy John surgery to be considered the team’s No. 3 starter. [autotag]Blake Purnell[/autotag] has received a bit of help in the bullpen with the emergence of [autotag]Fisher Jameson[/autotag] in recent weeks as well.
[autotag]Wyatt Langford[/autotag] continues to be the team’s best bat with a .365 batting average and 19 home runs, and [autotag]Sterlin Thompson[/autotag] is coming off a three-homer game against FSU where he also delivered a walk-off, two-run shot. [autotag]BT Riopelle[/autotag] has also been clutch for the team, both at the plate and behind it. A betting man would put money down on Riopelle going in the top seven rounds of the draft this year.
On the other hand, [autotag]Jud Fabian[/autotag] is in the slump of his life. He has just one hit in his last 30 at-bats and hasn’t put together a multi-hit game since May 3. A few weeks ago, it seemed like Fabian’s gamble to come back for one more year would pay off, but the decrease in strikeouts and increase in walks only goes so far when you’re batting .162 against the conference.
South Carolina isn’t the toughest team in the SEC to beat, so Fabian and Florida have a good chance at turning things around this weekend against them.