Against a lineup like Florida’s, opposing pitchers never get so much as a second to breathe.
Normally, pitchers have the luxury of working around the stronger hitters and attacking the weaker ones, but for the Gators, each batter is as dangerous as the next.
And it only gets worse each time through the order.
Over the course of Southeastern Conference play, the Gators have proven that every bat in the lineup is capable of doing damage, and that they only get stronger as the game wears on.
This is a trend No. 3 Florida (32-4, 12-2 SEC) will look to continue when Kentucky (26-16, 10-9 SEC) comes to Gainesville for a weekend series starting Saturday at 1 p.m.
The Gators are tops in the SEC and third in the nation with 7.38 runs per game, a figure that has been critical to the success of a team that is 50th nationally with a 2.22 team ERA.
“That’s the name of the game,” UF coach Tim Walton said. “We’ve been doing a good job of finding a way to score runs and gets wins.”
The strength of the team’s lineup has come from its ability to get both hits and home runs from a number of different players.
UF is the only team in the SEC that has seven starters hitting better than .300. Tennessee, Georgia and Ole Miss are all tied for second with five. The Gators are also the only squad to have a trio of players with 10 or more home runs, with only Georgia and Arkansas having as many as two.
“We’ve got a lot of options and a lot of good things going on,” Walton said. “Everybody gets hits, and I’m very happy with that.”
Earlier in the season, it was easy to point to Francesca Enea as the reason for the Gators’ offensive success.
The senior, who was recently named a finalist for the 2010 USA Softball Collegiate Player of the Year award, leads the SEC with an .892 slugging percentage, 15 home runs and 50 RBIs.
But Enea is only eighth on the team with a .243 average in SEC play, although Florida has still managed to go 12-2 in conference.
Over that span, the Gators have relied on their ability to make quality in-game adjustments to keep their run production high.
In conference games, UF hitters are only batting .206 the first time through the order.
But that average shoots up to .296 the second time through, then increases to .426 during the third trip around.
“The third time though the lineup seems to be the charm,” Walton said.
Junior Aja Paculba, who is usually responsible for sparking these shifts at the top of the order, attributes the spike in production to learning the pitcher and adjusting to her tendencies.
“It’s just making adjustments and not swinging at bad pitches and not letting the pitcher beat us,” Paculba said. “That first at-bat, we’re kinda just trying it out, and after that, it’s like we all know this is what she’s pitching me, this is what I need to do, and this is what I need to look for.”
