Although the Gators are one of the most prolific offensive teams in the nation, everything seems to change when they go up against top pitching.
While Florida leads the Southeastern Conference in home runs and slugging percentage, the team has only scored four runs in 19 innings against pitchers with an ERA less than 1.50, and are batting just .162 in that span despite hitting a combined .349 against all other opponents.
The No. 6 Gators (23-4, 6-2 SEC) get a chance to improve on those numbers when they travel to Orlando to take on UCF (22-12, 7-1 Conference USA) and pitcher Ashleigh Cole tonight at 7.
So far this season, Cole is 14-6 with a 1.37 ERA, and has led the Knights to upsets of SEC powers Tennessee and Alabama.
In UF’s three games against pitchers of that caliber, the Gators are just 1-2.
They were shut out by Georgia Tech’s Hope Rush (16-3, 1.38 ERA) in just the second game of the season, and suffered the same fate at the hands of Stanford’s Teagan Gerhart (18-3, 1.28 ERA), who allowed just two hits in her outing.
Their lone win came against Auburn’s Anna Thompson (9-5, 1.06 ERA), who threw 4.2 innings of no-hit softball before being tagged for four runs with two outs in the fifth.
“Our offense really came together and made adjustments,” Kelsey Bruder said. “We all talked about her pitches and what we were seeing and our body placement in the box.”
Although the back-to-back home runs the Gators hit to knock Thompson from the game are a positive sign, there is still plenty left to prove.
Thompson is a pitcher who is successful primarily because of her velocity, which is not what the Gators’ batters fear most at the plate.
Both Bruder and senior Francesca Enea agree that rotation, and not speed, is the hardest thing to handle as a hitter.
“The slower pitching with more movement is the hardest for me because I can’t control my hips for that long,” Enea said.
Although facing top-notch pitchers is inherently more difficult than normal, the UF hitters do their best to fight the urge to change too much.
Enea, Bruder and senior Corrie Brooks all agree that staying consistent and not trying to make too many adjustments is key against the best competition.
“You have to try to do everything the same,” Brooks said. “You can’t over-think yourself because that’s when things are going to go wrong.”
If UF struggles against certain pitchers, it is not due to a lack of preparation.
Each week, coach Tim Walton and his assistants gather whatever statistics and film they can to try to give hitters as much information as possible about who and what they will be up against.
“We see what type of pitching it is, if it’s a drop, rise, curve or screw,” Enea said. “We just start by looking at those type of things and then do a bunch of different things to get ready for it.”
Above all, the Gators hitters know how important it is to keep their confidence up in those situations.
Perhaps none know better than Bruder, who was 0 for 2 with a strikeout against Thompson before delivering one of the home runs that led to her removal.
“The only thing that’s different is they’re going to have their out pitches, so you can’t get down on yourself when you don’t produce exactly how you want,” Bruder said.
