FSU bats fall flat again, No. 5 Noles lose first ACC series vs. No. 3 GT

FSU baseball pitcher Trey Beard at Georgia Tech | FSU Sports Information

For the first time this season, the Florida State baseball team has lost an ACC series.

The fifth-ranked Seminoles (24-10) fell 9-3 to No. 3 Georgia Tech (29-5) in the second game of the series Friday night in Atlanta. They’ll look to avoid being swept in Saturday’s 3 p.m. series finale.

Paired with Tuesday’s loss to Florida, FSU is on a three-game losing streak, its longest of the season. In fact, it’s just the second multi-game losing streak of the season.

For the second straight night, the FSU pitching staff gave the team a chance by largely holding down a dangerous Georgia Tech lineup.

Through two games, the Yellow Jackets, who entered the series averaging 11.6 per game, plated just eight runs through the first 15 innings at the plate.

It was a 4-2 game in the eighth inning before the Yellow Jackets broke through with four insurance runs.

But once again, a Myles Bailey-less lineup was missing some of the punch its slugger provides, failing to take advantage of the opportunities it had in a low-scoring loss.

Chase Williams, back in the leadoff spot, stepped into the table-setter role, going 2-for-4. John Stuetzer, moved up to the fifth spot in the lineup, also had three hits and a pair of solo homers — one to lead off the second and one to lead off the ninth — to double his season total to four.

Eli Putnam added a seventh-inning solo homer, and Brayden Dowd had a hit and two walks.

FSU had just one inning where it didn’t put a batter on base. It put the leadoff batter on six times, three of them on solo homers. But the lineup was 1-for-10 with two outs (.100), 1-for-12 with runners on base (.083) and 0-for-5 with runners in scoring position.

Compare that to Georgia Tech’s 7-for-15 with two outs (.467), 7-for-16 with runners on base (.438) and 5-for-12 with runners in scoring position (.417).

Trey Beard (3-1, 4.10 ERA) was strong early, working a 10-pitch first inning and getting through two scoreless frames on 24 pitches. But Georgia Tech got to him in the third, stringing together six straight two-out baserunners on a pair of walks, a trio of singles and one double to jump out to a 4-1 lead.

Beard settled back in, finishing with four runs allowed on eight hits over 4 2/3 innings, striking out six and walking two.

Brodie Purcell replaced him and found a groove, setting down seven of the first eight batters he faced. FSU elected to send him back out there for the ninth, and Georgia Tech finally got through to him, loading the bases and plating four runs on back-to-back RBI singles.