FSU baseball: Mike Martin Jr. has to address offensive approach in 2022

FSU baseball saw its 2021 season come to a close against Southern Mississippi in the Oxford Regionals.

The Noles defeated Southern Mississippi in the regional opener but lost against Ole Miss Saturday night and Southern Mississippi Sunday.

The three games were a reflection of the entire 2021 season. Parker Messick is good enough to overcome errors and a lack of offense to help the Noles win games.

However, the offense isn’t good enough to consistently beat good teams. It’s also not good enough to overcome fielding errors and other self-inflicted wounds.

FSU baseball started the 2021 season struggling offensively, striking out nearly 35 percent of the time in their first 210 official at-bats.

I thought the offense might get better once they get some games under their belts and the weather warmed up a bit more. The offense did get better in spurts, but the number of strikeouts the team had overall was ridiculous.

FSU batters struck out 40 of 99 official at-bats (40.4 percent) in their last three games of the season, compared to 24 strikeouts for opposing teams.

FSU batters struck out 32 percent of the time for the entire season and only had an on-base percentage of .355 as a team. Mike Martin Sr. was a proponent of taking pitches, making pitchers work, and drawing lots of walks.

The number of hits and walks were down compared to past years.

Mike Martin Sr. said he wanted to be more aggressive, but I wouldn’t say that was the case. FSU batters still took a lot of pitches and would get favorable hitter counts but fail to capitalize in those situations.

I would be rich if I had a dollar for every time an FSU batter swing through a 2-0, 2-1, 3-1, or 3-2 fastball. It was like they had a doughnut on their bats at times with fastballs right down the middle.

Most FSU batters consistently pull off pitches on the outside part of the plate, which results in swing and misses or weak ground ball outs.

It’s one thing if you’re Elijah Cabell, who hit 15 home runs and has a batting average of .264 and an on-base percentage of .397. He struck out 78  times or 49 percent of his at-bats, but he was still productive at the plate.

Hitters that are virtually no threat to hit home runs are striking out 40 percent of their at-bats. What happened to shorten up and put the ball in play with two strikes?

I don’t see any adjustments from most of the hitters. Do they watch game film of their at-bats at all? They are incredibly undisciplined and swing at balls outside of the strike zone way too much.

Do they have a plan when they step into the batter’s box? It doesn’t seem so, and that’s something Mike Martin needs to fix ASAP because he has too good of a pitching staff to give games away because the offense can’t score runs.