No. 5 Florida Heads To SEC East Rival Missouri For Easter Weekend Series
Thursday, April 2, 2015 | Baseball
Florida vs. Missouri Series Notes
GAINESVILLE, Fla. – No. 5 Florida (23-7) travels to Missouri (20-10) for its fourth of 10 SEC series. The Gators are 5-4 (.556) in league action, while the Tigers have a 6-3 (.667) mark. No. 3 Vanderbilt leads the East and is tied atop the league standings with No. 1 Texas A&M at 7-2 (.778).
Sophomore right-hander Logan Shore (4-2, 1.89) will face Tiger junior right-hander Reggie McClain (4-2, 2.25) in Friday's series opener at 7 p.m. (ET), UF sophomore left-hander A.J. Puk (5-2, 4.20) will oppose freshman right-hander Tanner Houck (4-1, 2.96) in game two of the series on Saturday at 3 p.m. and Gator sophomore righty Dane Dunning (4-0, 2.38) will meet Missouri junior right-hander Peter Fairbanks (2-3, 2.39) in Sunday's finale at 2 p.m.
All three games of the weekend series can be heard through GatorZone.com and on the Gator IMG Sports Network with Jeff Cardozo and Steve Russell. The entire series will be carried on SEC Network+ with Ben Arnet and Colin McElroy through participating TV providers only through WatchESPN. Live stats for each game will be available on GatorZone.com and fans can also follow updates of each game on @GatorZoneBB, the official Twitter account of the Gator baseball team.
QUICK HITS ABOUT THE GATORS
- Florida hits the road for its second of five SEC road series. UF fell at Ole Miss twice two weeks ago and will also visit Mississippi State, Georgia and Vanderbilt this year.
- The Gators are 2-1 (.667) on conference weekends and are 6-1 (.857) in their weekend series in 2015.
- The Orange and Blue is 19-3 (.864) at McKethan Stadium and is 4-4 (.500) away from Gainesville so far this spring.
- After dropping the opener of a day/night doubleheader to Alabama last Friday, 12-9 in 10 innings, Florida rebounded to take the series by scores of 8-1 and 7-4.
- Junior SS Richie Martin (.304, 30 runs) enters the series on a seven-game hitting streak in which he is hitting .379 (11-for-29) with seven runs and three RBI. Freshman C/DH Mike Rivera (.314, 23 RBI) has at least one RBI in eight of the last nine games and had a career-best eight-game hitting streak and a stretch of seven games in a row with two RBI end Tuesday.
- After missing the Gators' first 16 games of the campaign with a hand injury, freshman 1B/RF Jeremy Vasquez is 16-for-48 (.333) overall and homered in the final two games of the series with Alabama.
- Sophomore 1B Peter Alonso is expected to make his season debut this weekend after being sidelined with a foot injury. He was a second-team Freshman All-American and an SEC All-Freshman Team member last year and then was the Most Valuable Player of the Northwoods League.
- Senior 3B Josh Tobias paces the Orange and Blue with a .376 batting average and has registered a perfect fielding percentage on the hot corner.
- Junior LF Harrison Bader (.359) leads the Gators in RBI (33), walks (21), homers (8) and slugging percentage (.717), while freshman 2B Dalton Guthrie (.328) leads the squad in hits (43), runs (28) and doubles (11).
- The Gator offense batted .358 (38-for-106) in the series with the Crimson Tide, led by sophomore RF Ryan Larson (.343, 16 runs, 15 RBI) going 6-for-12 (.500) with four RBI and a pair of doubles and Rivera batting .417 (5-for-12) with four RBI.
- The Gators have outscored their opponents, 213-115, are 18-1 (.947) this season when scoring first and are 13-1 (.929) when scoring in the first inning.
- Sophomore RHP Logan Shore (4-2, 1.89) completed last Friday's twinbill with his first career complete game, the first by a Gator pitcher since RHP Aaron Rhodes went the distance against Missouri on April 26, 2014.
- Making his first relief appearance of the season in Saturday's rubber game of the series, sophomore LHP A.J. Puk (5-2, 4.20) registered five strikeouts and permitted one hit over 3.1 scoreless innings to collect the Gators' seventh come-from-behind victory of the campaign.
- The Gators boast a .982 fielding percentage, tops in the SEC, and are 13-1 (.929) this season when playing error-free baseball.
- Led by Bader's SEC-leading eight round-trippers, Florida has 26 homers in 30 games after hitting 26 big flies in 63 contests in 2014.
- UF's bullpen is 8-1 with nine saves and a 3.32 team earned run average, while its starters are 15-6 with a 3.15 ERA and 128 strikeouts in 137 innings.
- With two outs, the Gators are hitting .335 (115-for-343) with 83 RBI, 15 from freshman C/DH JJ Schwarz and 14 from Bader. Tobias has a .552 (16-for-29) clip with two down, while Larson is 12-for-30 (.400) and Bader is 11-for-27 (.407).
SERIES NUGGETS
Florida has taken 10 of its 12 previous encounters with Missouri, and the teams will be meeting for the second time in Columbia as members of the SEC. Kevin O'Sullivan is 5-1 (.833) against the Tigers, 2-1 (.667) in Columbia and 3-0 (1.000) in Gainesville.
The Gators registered a 7-3 victory in the NCAA South Regional hosted in Coral Gables, Fla., on May 22, 1981, and pulled out a 6-5 decision in a mid-week game in Gainesville on March 1, 1984. The teams played a weekend series at McKethan Stadium over the weekend of Feb. 28-March 1, 1992, when Joe Arnold's club posted a sweep, 10-2, 8-3 and 4-3 in 11 innings. The Tigers ended the five-game slide to the Orange and Blue with a 14-5 win during the 2006 campaign in a weekend tourney that was held in Gainesville along with Ohio State and Wake Forest. Florida captured two of the three meetings in Columbia from April 19-21, 2013 (8-6, 4-3 (15), 2-8) and posted a weekend last April at McKethan Stadium.
LAST SEASON'S SERIES
Florida downed Missouri three times at McKethan Stadium (7-1, 5-0, 6-5 (10). The Gator pitching staff compiled a 1.61 ERA over the three games against the Tigers, with 15 strikeouts over 28 innings.
Taylor Gushue was the top performer on the weekend, going 5-for-12 (.417). Peter Alonso was 3-for-8, highlighted by five RBI in the series opener, and Zack Powers went 4-for-11 (.364) with four runs.
Ryan Larson delivered the game-winning single with two out in the 10th inning to lift the Gators to a 6-5 win and a sweep on Sunday afternoon. Powers (2-for-5) singled up the middle with two down and moved into scoring position with his first stolen base of the season before A.J. Puk was walked intentionally. Larson (2-for-2) stepped to the plate and roped a single into center field that brought Powers across with the winning run. Bobby Poyner worked four scoreless innings, scattering two hits, to collect the victory.
Aaron Rhodes threw a one-hit shutout as the Gators clinched the series by blanking Missouri, 5-0, on Saturday afternoon. Rhodes surrendered only a second-inning double and retired the final 18 Tiger hitters in going the distance. Casey Turgeon went 2-for-4 with two RBI and Buddy Reed (2-for-3) scored twice to lead the Gators.
Logan Shore carried a shutout into the eighth inning and Alonso went 3-for-4 and had a career-high five RBI as UF claimed the series opener, 7-1, on Friday night. Shore permitted five singles during his outing, with five strikeouts, one run and zero walks. Alonso was a homer shy of the cycle after a two-run single in the second, an RBI triple in the sixth and a two-run double in the eighth.
TICKETS
Single-game tickets, season tickets and the Complete Game Mini-Plans can be purchased online through GatorZone or by calling the Gator Ticket Office at 1-800-34-GATOR from 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m., Monday through Friday. For all of the latest information on Florida baseball, log on to GatorZone or follow the team's Twitter account @GatorZoneBB.
