FSU baseball: Messick dominates and offense explodes against Louisville

FSU baseball (20-13, 8-8 ACC) took the opening game of the series 8-1 behind a dominant start from Parker Messick and an early offensive explosion.

Messick went 6.2 innings and finished with 14 strikeouts, no walks, and five hits allowed. Messick allowed four of the five hits in the first two innings and was lights out after that.

The FSU offense got started early, scoring five runs in the bottom of the second inning. The Noles scored two more runs in the bottom of the seventh behind a two-run homer from Jaime Ferrer.

FSU baseball hitters struck out 11 times, but three hitters accounted for seven of them. Ferrer went 3-4 with four RBI, a double, and the home run. Alex Toral was 1-3 with two RBI.

Takeaways

FSU has benefited from the long ball in the past couple of games which has covered up some complacency at the plate.

The Noles have scored runs early in bunches, only to go several innings without doing anything productive. However, they don’t need a lot of runs whenever Parker Messick is pitching the way he did Thursday night.

It was a great bounce-back performance after the shortest outing of his career last week. I should point out they only left three runners on base and did execute a sacrifice bunt to move runners up and eventually score the first run in the game.

Bunting is something they have struggled with throughout the year. I wrote in the preview that Louisville’s pitching isn’t great, and the key to the series would be shutting down their potent offense.

Mission accomplished, and it’ll be up to Bryce Hubbart to see if he can get back to form on Friday and try to top what Messick did Thursday night. If the offense can show up again, they should have a solid shot of securing the series.