Wil Dalton tapped his right cleat with the barrel of his bat after watching strike three blow past him.
No arguing. No yelling. No chirps from the dugout. Just a drum from his bat on his shoe, serving as an acknowledgement of Kentucky’s dominant pitching on Saturday afternoon.
It didn’t even matter that catcher JJ Schwarz spat a towering, opposite-field home run on the game’s next at-bat. It didn’t matter because with a grounder from Austin Langworthy to follow it, No. 6 Kentucky (26-14, 8-10 SEC) sealed its 3-2 win over No. 1 Florida (34-8, 14-4 SEC) to take the final game of the weekend’s three game series. Florida still won the series with wins on Thursday and Friday.
“As the game went on,” Gators coach Kevin O’Sullivan said in a release, “I don’t think we made the adjustments that we usually do make. But credit their pitcher, it was a really good changeup.”
The story of the afternoon was exactly what led to Dalton’s strikeout and Langworthy’s decisive bouncer: Kentucky’s dominant pitching.
That started appropriately enough with UK starter Justin Lewis.
Lewis threw eight innings of one-run baseball, and that one run was unearned.
It came in the fifth inning. Center fielder Nick Horvath got it started by drawing a two-out walk. He advanced to second on a balk and scored when a routine grounder from Deacon Liput was thrown away by UK’s second baseman. Horvath had already slowed around third, thinking the inning was over, before he hustled home.
Liput managed UF’s only hit off Lewis with a double to right field to lead off the game. Nelson Maldonado followed with a walk and and Jonathan India was hit by a pitch to load the bases with no outs.
Dalton struck out. Schwarz struck out. Langworthy popped up. Threat over, inning over and, as it turned out, game over. Because Lewis was nearly untouchable from there on.
“I think that’s the second time this year we’ve had the bases loaded, nobody out and we didn’t score,” O’Sullivan said. “You never really know when your opportunities are going to come. Credit their starter.”
Lewis finished the game with 11 strikeouts, the one hit, three walks and no earned runs.
Florida’s Tyler Dyson experienced an entirely opposite afternoon.
Dyson hasn’t made it past five innings in SEC play, and his two innings on Saturday were his fewest thrown this season. He allowed one run in the first, another in the second and one more in the third before O’Sullivan yanked him. His final line: Four hits, four walks, three runs and zero strikeouts.
His ERA swelled to 3.72 as a result.
The only positive for Florida was his relief: Freshman Jack Leftwich, who tossed six scoreless innings starting in the bottom of the third. Leftwich only allowed two hits and walked one.
“He was really good,” O’Sullivan said.
The Gators were 2-2 on the week with Saturday’s loss. They’ll have a shot at midweek redemption following Tuesday’s loss to Jacksonville when Mercer arrives in Gainesville this Tuesday.
Despite his team’s struggles in the UK series finale — UF’s two hits were its fewest of the season — O’Sullivan tried to stay positive after the game.
“Today was a little disappointing,” he said, “but the big picture on the weekend, we played pretty good.”
Follow Ethan Bauer on Twitter @ebaueri and contact him at ebauer@alligator.org.
Tyler Dyson allowed three runs on four hits through 2.0-plus innings in Florida's 3-2 loss to Kentucky on Saturday. He didn't record a strikeout in his shortest outing of the season.
