Vanderbilt will stumble into Gainesville this weekend looking like a shell of the Southeastern Conference baseball powerhouse people tend to think of when the Commodores are discussed.
When the No. 1 Gators (16-1) take the field at McKethan Stadium tonight at 7, they will see a team with a losing record (7-10) that is near the bottom of the SEC in nearly every statistic.
Offensively, the Commodores are batting just .273 as a team and have struck out 114 times. Defensively, no SEC team has allowed more runs (101) or committed more errors (30).
“Baseball is a funny game,” UF catcher Mike Zunino said. “You could be going bad and then the next thing you know it clicks and they could go on a run. It’s something that we cannot take for granted.”
While the Commodores may not march in with the best resume in hand, they will arrive to play the Gators with a little sense of normalcy and consistency. That’s because starting on Friday night will be left-handed pitcher Kevin Ziomek, the one constant on a Vanderbilt team that has been all over the place to start 2012.
Ziomek has given up eight earned runs in 23.1 innings of work, with his only loss this season coming in an 8-3 defeat on opening night to Stanford, the nation’s No. 2 team.
But it will not only be Ziomek’s skill set and low- to mid-90s fastball that could give the Gators trouble. While it would be considered nitpicking to claim full-blown weaknesses in the UF batting lineup right now, it is fair to say that lefties have a bit of an advantage against the nation’s most powerful team.
Of Florida’s top-four leaders in batting average, only Zunino bats right-handed. Of Florida’s 27 home runs this season, 15 have come from left-handed batters, eight have come from righties and four have come courtesy of freshman Taylor Gushue, one of two switch-hitters on the team.
“We have a lot of lefties and we just have to battle and compete every at-bat,” Zunino said.” I think we’re doing a great job of that this year.”
Although Florida’s team batting average is .312, its team average against left-handed pitching is a notch lower at .298 — not a sign of serious troubles by any means but a slight note when dealing with a team that has won 14 straight games by an average of 5.4 runs and is hitting .323 in March.
In preparing for Ziomek, the Gators find a lefty that throws hard but also has an unorthodox delivery, something they learned during his freshman season when he held them hitless during 2.1 innings of relief over three appearances. This time, there won’t be any surprises, and senior right fielder Preston Tucker said UF is prepared for anything.
“We’ve got a few hard-throwing lefties on our squad, too, so I think seeing those guys in the fall and spring is definitely going to (help),” he said. “Nothing is going to surprise us.”
Etc.: For the third straight weekend, sophomore right-hander Jonathon Crawford will be Florida’s Sunday starter as the Gators continue to hold sophomore Karsten Whitson out of action for what UF coach Kevin O’Sullivan has called “precautionary reasons.”
