Florida State baseball: Seminoles offense erupts in doubleheader sweep of Panthers

FSU baseball pitcher Wes Mendes faces Pittsburgh The Florida State Seminoles baseball team had to wait an extra day to start their series with the Pittsburgh Panthers. Friday’s game was canceled due to inclement weather and after Saturday’s offensive outburst from the Seminoles, the Panthers may have wished the whole weekend was a wash. FSU scored 18 total runs in their doubleheader sweep of Pitt and Seminoles pitching recorded 20 strikeouts.

Game 1 With how poorly last weekend at Stanford went, it’s doubtful FSU wanted to wait an extra day to kick off the Pitt series. The inclement weather which delayed Friday night’s game may have made the wait longer but it didn’t remotely derail one of FSU’s most complete performances in ACC play to begin the series. The Seminoles delivered a 10-1 victory over the Panthers in the opener of the doubleheader which was headlined by a dominant showing on the mound by junior lefty Wes Mendes.

He threw the program’s first nine-inning complete game since Drew Parrish in 2018, holding the Panthers to five hits over the distance, striking out seven, walking none and hitting one. It was actually his second complete game of the season, but the other was a seven-inning run-rule defeat of Wake Forest so this marks the longest outing of his career. The only run Mendes allowed came on a leadoff homer from Lorenzo Carrier in the fourth inning.

But after that followed by a bloop single, he retired 15 straight batters before allowing a leadoff single to begin the ninth. That ninth-inning runner took second on a wild pitch and third on a sacrifice fly, but he was prevented from scoring with back-to-back strikeouts to end the game. The final out required a throw to first after a dropped third strike reached the backstop.