FSU baseball: How good was FSU's three-game sweep over James Madison?

FSU baseball (3-0) defeated James Madison in a three-game series to open the 2025 season over the weekend.

FSU baseball fans want to know what this means, and I'm here to help.

James Madison went (36-25, 17-13, Sun Belt Conference) last year and made a regional with a team that hit .297 and had a .391 on-base percentage with 88 home runs. They stole 106 based on 141 attempts and had a .505 slugging percentage (FSU was at .558 last year).

The problem is like FSU, James Madison lost most of its offensive production to the transfer portal, graduation, or MLB Draft.

However, unlike FSU, they couldn't attract great talent from the transfer portal or JUCO ranks. FSU does return several guys with significant experience from last year's team.

JMU only returned two guys who batted over .300 from last year's team. Their top three hitters who left the program after last year accounted for 45 of their 88 home runs. It's the first series, and we saw the FSU bats struggle some initially. FSU has some great arms, but JMU has a lot of inexperience in its lineup.

A few guys like Jamie Arnold will do what they do, but I expect much more contact against the better teams on the schedule when Volini and Mendes(Saturday and Sunday starters) take the mound later in the year.

FSU had 40 strikeouts, only allowed 10 hits (eight singles), and only allowed six walks in the series. That's dominant, but I wouldn't come to expect that type of dominance against the better teams in the ACC.

We'll probably see much more competitive at-bats from more seasoned hitters.

Offensively, Link Jarrett said it in the post-game press conference. The at-bats for FSU got better as the series progressed. However, there's a lot of work to make the approach more consistent. A few guys seem to press in the series, probably because it's the beginning of the year, and expectations are high. JMU does have a few quality arms, so credit to them, but the quality of at-bat must improve overall by a great deal.

Also, JMU did themselves no favors defensively, committing 10 errors in the three-game series.

So, while it was a good series sweep, I think it's safe to say James Madison probably isn't a great measuring stick to start proclaiming that FSU pitchers will shut everyone down and the offense will average 10 runs per game.

However, there was a lot to like and FSU dominated a team they should. We should learn a lot more about this team over the next few weeks.