After trailing for the previous eight innings last Friday against Ole Miss, the Gators had Austin Maddox up at the plate in a one-run game with the bases loaded in the ninth.
But the freshman ended the game, not with a hit, but by watching a third strike go by to strand three runners on base.
This has been a problem for No. 8 Florida (18-6, 4-2 Southeastern Conference) lately. Since starting with a 17-3 record, it is going through a rough 1-3 stretch due in part to poor hitting with runners in scoring position. It will try to turn that around against No. 17 Vanderbilt (23-4, 4-2 SEC) tonight at 6:30 in McKethan Stadium.
“I like our team, we have a good team. We just have not played well the last three out of four games — it’s as simple as that,” UF coach Kevin O’Sullivan said. “We knew going into this thing there were going to be spells where we were going to struggle a little bit.”
The Gators went just 5 for 26 (.192) with runners in scoring position and left 29 on base in the last three losses. UF only left five runners on base in the one win, when it drove in 13 runs.
Second baseman Josh Adams attributes those numbers to a mental battle hitters must face when put into those types of situations.
“It’s kind of one of those things where your mind is running in two different directions,” he said. “You want to get them in, but then again you want to get a hit too.”
In order to fix the problem, O’Sullivan attempts to create these scenarios during practices.
“We try to simulate as much as we can when we intersquad,” said catcher Mike Zunino, who has only one hit in his last 25 at-bats. “We’ll put a runner on third with no outs or one out and we just try to make it a game-like scenario.”
Strikeouts have been a big reason for the lack of situational hitting. Empty at-bats that fail to move a runner over have correlated directly with Florida’s recent struggles to bring runners in.
O’Sullivan preaches putting the ball in play and to stay away from deep counts with runners in scoring position to his hitters.
But they haven’t done that.
The Gators have struck out an average of 10.67 times per game in the last three losses, way up from their season average of seven punchouts.
“It’s just another out that the defense doesn’t have to field,” Zunino said. “If you cut strikeouts in half and make them field half of those balls, anything can happen.
“I think we are taking too big of swings. Getting into deep counts is starting to hurt us a little bit and I don’t think we are being as aggressive as we were during the fall or spring during scrimmages.”
