The season started well.
Florida won three of its first four games, including a 16-5 blowout of Duke to clinch the first series of the season in front of 3,581 fans at McKethan Stadium.
Then, the first losing streak hit. Florida lost a midweek game to Georgia Southern in extra innings before being swept by Florida Gulf Coast — a team Florida had beaten in six of their seven prior meetings.
“It’s a long season,” senior Cody Dent said after the sweep.
It only got longer.
The Gators fell to 3-7 to start the season after losing three games to the Eagles, a midweek game to North Florida and the series opener to Miami. Florida wouldn’t crawl back over .500 until April 12.
Nothing went well for the Gators in the first months of the season. Pitching was hard to find. Junior Jonathon Crawford struggled to find consistency. In his first six starts of the season, he gave up three, zero, eight, nine, three and 12 hits. He didn’t notch his first win of the season until he blanked Ole Miss in a complete-game shutout on March 30.
Despite being the only upperclassman starter on the team, he was demoted to the No. 2 spot in the rotation in March.
The the other starters struggled as well.
Freshman Jay Carmichael moved from the bullpen to the rotation and eventually became the team’s No. 1 starter after a string of solid outings, but he battled through arm injuries for the next month.
Eric Hanhold, Bobby Poyner, Tucker Simpson and Danny Young all made seven or more starts and had flashes of brilliance, but none could make a lasting impact as starters. Coach Kevin O’Sullivan shuttled them back and forth between the rotation and the bullpen.
“The thing that’s most disappointing up to this point is I don’t think we’ve seen the improvement with some players we thought we would,” O’Sullivan said.
The situation was just as dire in the starting lineup.
With the exodus of most of the 2012 team to professional baseball, the Gators had many holes to fill. Some underclassmen filled their roles well.
Freshman Richie Martin came in to replace Nolan Fontana at shortstop. He started the season well before suffering a finger injury. When he came back, he moved to the outfield, leaving Dent and his sub-.200 average in the starting lineup at shortstop.
Fellow first-year Harrison Bader hit above .300 and provided speed on the base paths, leading the team with 15 steals.
But the power was never there.
Sophomore Taylor Gushue needed to fill the exceptionally large cleats of Mike Zunino, and he didn’t. He finished the year with five home runs – four fewer than Zunino hit in any season at Florida.
“We got to get better offensively,” O’Sullivan said. “We have not put good swings in offensive counts and did enough damage there.”
For a stretch in April, it looked like Florida had finally put it together. The Gators beat the Seminoles on the road and swept the Gamecocks at home. They won 11 out of 12 games to jump out to a 25-19 record by April 27.
But it was not meant to be.
LSU swept Florida in Baton Rouge, and UF limped its way into the Southeastern Conference Tournament after losing four of its last six. The team did not win a game in the postseason, losing the opener of the SEC Tournament and going home after two games in the NCAA Bloomington Regional – the earliest exit for Florida since 2008. O’Sullivan was not satisfied.
“This season is not the standard we want at Florida,” O’Sullivan said. “There’s no rebuilding at Florida … We’ve got young players, but it’s time to grow up.”
Contact Adam Lichtenstein at alichtenstein@alligator.org.
Editor’s note: This story was edited and re-published for the Welcome Back Edition of the Alligator on August 21.
Jay Carmichael pitches against Florida Gulf Coast on Feb. 24. Carmichael finished the season with the Gators’ third best ERA. The Gators were sent home after two games in the NCAA Bloomington Regional.
