FSU baseball: Takeaways from series sweep over Louisville Cardinals

FSU baseball (22-13, 10-8 ACC) defeated the Louisville Cardinals 10-9 Sunday to complete the series sweep. It was another typical Sunday of late, with Ross Dunn struggling on the mound for the Noles.

Dunn only pitched one-third of an inning, allowing three earned runs, two hits, and one hit batter. The Noles responded with a run in the bottom half and Louisville scored another run in the top of the second. Jackson Greene hit a two-run home run in the bottom frame to trim the lead to 4-3.

The Noles tied the game in the bottom of the fourth and took the lead for good on Jordan Carrion’s first home run as a Nole, a three-run shot that hit the top of the wall and went over. Louisville would not go quietly, trimming the lead to 10-9 going into the top of the ninth.

Carson Montgomery came into the game with runners on first and second with one out and struck out both batters he faced to get the save.

Key Takeaways

A sweep in conference play is incredibly difficult, and I don’t want to take away from the team rebounding to go 4-0 last week at a crucial time. However, here’s what I wrote in the series preview Thursday:

"This series will need for FSU baseball to get back to the basics. Offensively, Louisville can swing it as they have three players with double-digit home runs and eight players hitting .290 or better. FSU pitchers will have to stay ahead in the count, or they will pay dearly. They can’t issue free passes and must make Cardinal batters earn it.FSU batters should be able to take advantage of Louisville pitching if they go up to the plate with a solid approach. Their best pitcher has allowed 10 earned runs between his last two starts. I think we need to see FSU get off to good starts on the mound and at the plate. If they have to play from behind, that’s not going to be a good recipe for success."

The key takeaways were it was a good matchup for the Noles. FSU starting pitchers and the bullpen shut down the high-powered Cardinal offense and the FSU batters took advantage of suspect Louisville pitchers.

Louisville has outhit most of their opponents, but that’s a tall ask for a team with pitching like FSU. It helped that the FSU offense jumped out to early leads against the Cardinals in the first two games, as we saw Sunday was a dogfight when Louisville jumped out to its early lead. It took a career day from Jordan Carrion to get them over the hump.

The Noles had another unlikely standout in Treyton Rank, with a four-hit, four-RBI day in game two. Jaime Ferrer was the offensive star in game one with a 3-4 four-RBI night. Alex Toral found some life with two home runs in the series.

What I said in the preview came to fruition, with FSU batters taking advantage of hitter counts and being the aggressor early in the count. There were a lot of hard-hit balls to the opposite field and lots of quality at-bats, along with some clutch two-out hits. We’ve seen FSU pitchers shutdown high-powered offenses a few times this year. Can FSU hitters repeat this type of production against better pitchers?

I hope so because it looked like they were having fun out there this week. They will return to action Wednesday night against Georgia Southern.