FSU baseball rebounds to win Notre Dame series: Positives/concerns from the series

FSU baseball (23-4, 7-2 ACC) rebounded from its series-opening loss on Friday to sweep Sunday's doubleheader to win the series against the Notre Dame Fighting Irish on the road.

Many FSU fans lost their minds when the Noles lost on Friday with Jamie Arnold on the mound.

The loss didn't concern me much because Notre Dame was doing something they hadn't done all year(hit home runs), and FSU pitchers issued a gazillion walks to help Notre Dame, and the game tied in the late innings.

I know the feeling is Jamie Arnold should win every start, but he's going to have off days. It just so happens he hasn't been dominant in back-to-back starts. It looks like he has some things going on with his mechanics that are making him more erratic than usual. He'll get it figured out.

The good news is that FSU didn't allow the loss in the series opener to turn into two or three losses. Joey Volini is repeating what Jamie Arnold did last year when everyone thought Cam Leiter was the ace (it was really Arnold). Volini has been the best and most consistent pitcher FSU has had so far this year.

He shut Notre Dame down after a rocky first inning, and it was a good thing he did because the FSU offense didn't produce like the first or third game.

Wes Mendes had been lights out all year until his last two starts. However, the walks have been out of control for him lately. Luckily the FSU offense decided to make a statement in the rubber match and gave the FSU pitchers more than enough cushion despite their struggles. Notre Dame isn't a great team, but the objective is to win the series, and that's what FSU did on the road. Let's talk positives and concerns:

Positives

The season will have ebbs and flows. Sometimes the pitching will carry the offense and vice versa. FSU batters went 34 for 107 (.317) in the series with 12 home runs and seven doubles. They only left 17 runners on base in the series. That's just over five per game.

FSU got production from the guys at the top of the lineup, freshmen Myles Bailey and Hunter Carns played big parts. Also, redshirt freshmen Brody Delamielleure and James Hankerson were noticeable, especially the latter in game three.

Joey Volini was lights out after the first inning and pitched a complete game (seven innings) for the second consecutive week to save the bullpen.

Concerns

FSU batters continue to strike out too much. They struck out 30 times in the series (28 percent) and only walked seven times. Only eight strikeouts came from freshmen or redshirt freshmen. I expect them to strike out at a high clip, but this was mainly upperclassmen doing it.

Pundits have been putting the FSU pitching staff on a high pedestal, but I pointed out how they hadn't faced any top offenses yet (and still haven't). The biggest issue lately is walking batters. FSU pitchers issued 21 walks and hit three batters. That's 24 bases on balls in a three-game stretch. They consistently fall behind in counts, which results in walks or giving up hits in hitter counts. They allowed 31 hits and 27 runs (25 earned). Some of those runs came courtesy of the wind in game one, but that happens when you issue tons of walks and get behind in the count.

FSU has to find an answer at catcher defensively.

Overall Thoughts

Talent isn't an issue at FSU. It's the execution of the little things. Pitchers throwing strikes and getting ahead in the count, and batters not chasing pitches out of the zone. It's situational hitting with runners on third base with less than one out.

If the pitchers cut down on the walks and the hitters cut down on the strikeouts, this team increases its margin of error greatly. However, they can't make mistakes like these against good teams, because they will make them pay.

I want to address this also. Micah Posey is an excellent pitching coach and catches way too much flack on social media during games. It's crazy how he doesn't get any credit when the starting pitching was dominating teams, but when guys don't perform well, it's his fault. He can't go out there and throw it for them. The work he did last year with Leiter getting hurt and turning Carson Dorsey into a starter changed that team's ceiling, not to mention the improvement from some of the guys in the bullpen.

Wes Mendes was getting hailed as the best starter on Sunday's a few weeks ago, and now Posey sucks because he's had two sub-par starts? The pitchers have to execute the pitches getting called, and they work on it every week. We have to stop jumping to conclusions on such small samples sizes.

FSU will play a scrappy Jacksonville team in the midweek, but we'll learn a lot about this FSU baseball team when they host Wake Forest next week. It will be the best offensive team they've faced all year, and they will be coming off of a series loss against Virginia Tech. Their pitching staff has more strikeouts than FSU, so FSU batters will have their hands full.

The team that executes best and doesn't beat themselves will win the series. That's really it. All of the jumping to conclusions about which players or coaches suck is a waste of time. Remember how bad FSU looked against Clemson and Wake Forest early last season? The team found a way to put it together as the season progressed, and that's the goal as May and June roll around.