Michigan continued their postseason run (Williams / WBR) CLICK TO BUY
Two of the last four teams in the field when the 64-team regional bids were announced continued their improbable postseason push in Omaha on day one of the 2019 College World Series. Michigan jumped out to an early four-run lead and held off a Texas Tech rally to earn a 5-3 win on Saturday afternoon. Then later that night, Mike Martin’s last run at an ever elusive national championship got off on the right foot when his Florida State Seminoles outlasted last year’s CWS runner-up Arkansas in a 1-0 pitchers’ duel to earn a date with the Wolverines on Monday night.
In the afternoon session, Jimmy Kerr went 1 for 3 at the plate with a walk, a run scored, and a two-out, two-strike, two-run triple to help Michigan open up a 4-0 lead in the top of the third inning. That would end up being enough to hold off the Red Raiders as junior right-hander Karl Kauffman held them to three runs on eight hits over seven innings to earn his 11th win of the season.
JC FLowers literally did it all for Florida State in Saturday night’s win (Williams / WBR) CLICK TO BUY
The nightcap featured nothing but zeroes until J.C. Flowers, a fourth-round pick of the Pittsburgh Pirates, got hit by a 1-1 pitch to lead off the top of the ninth inning. Flowers moved to second on a hit-and-run, advanced to third on a bunt, then scored the only run of the game on a sacrifice fly to right field off the bat of eight-hole hitter Nander De Sedas.
Literally seconds after he came home to give his team the lead, Flowers sprinted down to the bullpen, warmed up in a hurry with sweat dripping from his goatee on every toss, then came on to close the door with a three up, three down bottom of the ninth that he punctuated with a swing and a miss to give the Seminoles a win in their CWS opener for the first time since 1999 when they made it all the way to the title game before losing to a winner-take-all game to in-state rival Miami.
All four teams will be back in action at TD Ameritrade Park Omaha on Monday. Texas Tech and Arkansas will play an elimination game at 1:00 p.m. Florida State and Michigan will follow that with a winner’s bracket tilt at 6:00 p.m.
2019 College World Series Day One Notebook
Michigan’s Two-Strike Knocks
Jimmy Kerr gets a key triple to drive in runs for the Wolverines (Juszyk / WBR) CLICK TO BUY
The biggest hit of the game for the Wolverines came off the bat of senior first baseman Jimmy Kerr. With two outs in the bottom of the third, Kerr lined a 1-2 pitch into the right field corner for a 2-run triple — his first three-bagger of the season — to extend Michigan’s lead to 3-0. Kerr scored three pitches later on a base hit by Blake Nelson and that would prove to be enough run support to advance to the winner’s bracket. Kerr’s knock was the highlight of an afternoon filled of quality at-bats with two strikes against Texas Tech’s pitching staff.
They reached base six times, found gloves on a couple hard hit line drives, and only went down looking once in two-strike counts.
“We lost a series at Ohio State and we had a bunch of backwards K’s, and that was an opportunity for a teaching moment with our team to really dial in our two-strike approach,” Michigan head coach Erik Bakich said. “Our guys just got a whole lot grittier, a whole lot tougher with two strikes. They committed to choking up and just really doing a good job of expanding the zone with two strikes, and it wasn’t about taking their Twitter swing, it was about being ugly productive.
“Sometimes you’ve got to stick your butt out and foul one off just to get to the next pitch. So our guys are doing a great job of battling and fighting with two strikes just to put the barrel on the ball, because this is college baseball — good things happen when you can force mistakes, and you saw that happen with the extra run that we got that proved to be a huge insurance run there.”
Karl Kauffman’s Effectiveness
Michigan’s ace Karl Kauffman was pretty effective for the Wolverines on Saturday (Juszyk / WBR) CLICK TO BUY
Michigan’s ace didn’t light up the radar gun or wow the crowd with whiff after whiff on Saturday afternoon, but he was nonetheless dominant throughout his seven innings of work against a Texas Tech lineup that is always one swing away from the changing the game. The junior right-hander, who went 77th overall to the Rockies in the MLB Draft a week and a half ago, needed just 101 pitches to get 21 outs. Only two of the eight hits he allowed over seven innings went for extra bases and he didn’t walk any of the 29 batters he faced.
“He hit his spots,” Texas Tech slugger Josh Jung said. “Basically, they were shifting us all over the field, he was hitting his spots, and we hit straight into the shift pretty much all day.”
Eleven of Kauffman’s 21 outs came in the air, so there was some luck on his side with the wind blowing out at TD Ameritrade Park, but he’s not the first pitcher to induce his fair share of flyballs in Omaha and live to tell about it. After giving up six runs on nine hits over five innings in a 10-3 loss to Texas Tech on March 22, his approach on Saturday was consistent, and so were his results.
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Photos from Michigan vs. Texas Tech courtesy of Ken Juszyk and Brad Williams
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He threw nine pitches in the first inning, five pitches in the fourth, 10 pitches in the fifth, and 13 in the seventh. He only went to a three-ball count five times, and the Red Raiders never had more than three baserunners against him on any of his three times through the order.
“That’s a really good lineup they’ve got over there, one through nine — speed, power, very well-balanced,” Kauffman said. “After we played them in March, we learned, came out here with the approach that we had to minimize their opportunities and just limit the mistakes. Even today they made me pay for every mistake I made. So just minimize their opportunities, go right after them, and let the defense work.
“It was nice having to jump out to that 4-0 lead, too. Never going to complain about that.”
Hogs-‘Noles Beat The Sun To Bed
Drew Parrish did his part for the ‘Noles (Williams / WBR)
As effective as Kauffman was in punching his team’s ticket to Monday night’s winner’s bracket game, he was upstaged a few hours later by Arkansas’ Isaiah Campbell and Florida State’s Drew Parrish. The two aces put on a show for a crowd of more than 26,000 spectators. Campbell struck out 10 Florida State batters over seven innings of work. The 76th overall pick to the Seattle Mariners — one spot ahead of where Michigan’s ace landed to the Rockies — gave up five singles, two walks, and didn’t allow a single Seminole to reach third base while he was on the mound.
Parrish, an eighth round pick to the Royals, posted a nearly identical line to keep his team in the game against the Arkansas ace. Florida State’s junior lefty struck out nine, walked two, and gave up just five hits — only one of which went for extra bases — over eight shutout innings to earn his ninth win of the year. It was hardly a wind-aided affair either as the two hurlers kept opposing hitters off balance all night in a postseason pitching clinic.
“Y’all saw the same game that I did,” Florida State head coach Mike Martin said. “That was just a masterpiece of pitching by these two men. It was a game in which you’re on the edge of your seat the entire nine innings. It was extremely well-played by both teams.
“It was a game that if you knew you could go to a baseball game every night, you would be big-time baseball fans because that’s the way you hope that your team plays every night.”
Isaiah Campbell did all he could for the Razorbacks (Juszyk / WBR) CLICK TO BUY
To add some context to how dominant the two aces were on Saturday night, Campbell generated 20 swinging strikes on 101 pitches. Eight of his 10 strikeouts came courtesy of an FSU hitter swinging at a ball and hitting only air.
On the other side, Parrish produced 25 swinging strikes and only went to a three-ball count to three of the 30 batters he faced. He struck out six of the final 12 hitters he faced and finished the night with an absurd 38.9% CSW rate which takes into account called strikes and swinging strikes to gauge just effective he was at both hitting his spots and missing bats.
“Pitching in Omaha has got to be the top by far,” Parrish said when asked where Saturday’s performance ranks. “Every kid dreams of playing at that field and being in a situation like it was tonight with great fan support from both sides and great competition. It was probably the best game of my career.”
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See all photos from Florida St. vs. Arkansas courtesy of Brad Williams and Ken Juszyk