Miami Hurricanes Baseball: Miami Falls 7-3 Against Florida, Masterful Faedo

In such an important series early on in the college baseball season, a team can find a lot about what their ball club and their opponents are made of. Well, on Sunday afternoon in front of another packed Mark Light Field crowd, the Miami Hurricanes (5-2) found out a lot of about themselves and certainly found a lot about Alex Faedo.

The Florida (7-1) starter that eliminated Miami in Omaha a season ago gave up no hits, struck out a career-high 12 batters and was masterful in the Gators 7-3 series-clinching victory.

“Today we definitely got outplayed,” Coach Jim Morris said after the game. “We didn’t make adjustments as hitters and Faedo just threw outstanding.”

Faedo’s performance was certainly phenomenal and like Logan Shore on Friday night, it was very evident it would be his day from the start.

After Florida got on the board early thanks to a J.J. Schwarz RBI groundout, Faedo struck out two batters with devastating sliders in the inning and besides a walk to Collins, the righthander’s command was nearly perfect. The Gators added two more runs in the second off of Danny Garcia after a two-RBI single from Dalton Guthrie and from there on out it was the Alex Faedo show.

Miami struck out 12 times and were held without a hit against Florida’s Sunday starter looking completely outmatched each and every inning. Faedo allowed only two walks and one runner to reach on an error and despite his dominance after 6.1 innings, the righthander was pulled due to his pitch count.

“He was just hitting his spots today,” Chris Barr said when asked what made Faedo so unhittable. “His slider was pretty good, his fastball was moving a little bit and he just had great command.”

Even after Faedo was pulled, his replacement Kirby Snead had just as much success. The lefthander finished off the seventh inning with two strikeouts and the looming cloud of a no-hitter began to move in over the 4,784 in attendance at Mark Light Field.

After Florida had added a run in the sixth off of a Peter Alonso RBI groundout and three runs in the seventh after a Schwarz two-RBI triple and an Alonso sacrifice fly, the game was all but decided, now all that mattered was the no-hitter.

Coming into the day, the Hurricanes had gone 3,180 consecutive games without being no-hit, but after Miami was held off the board once again in the eighth, that remarkable streak seemed on the cusp of ending at the hands of the Gators.

Despite Miami being down 7-0 to their hated rival, you would have never known it by the noise being made by the Hurricane faithful. Going against Florida closer Shaun Anderson, Miami almost got their first hit of the game as Carl Chester chopped one to short, but Dalton Guthrie fielded it cleanly and threw it passed the first basemen in a play that was correctly ruled an error.

Chris Barr stepped to the plate in an otherwise meaningless at-bat if it weren’t for the no-hitter and the Canes first baseman delivered a bloop single into left to end the no-hitter and to keep Miami’s unbelievable streak going. The Hurricanes made a nice ninth inning rally, but it was certainly too little too late despite a bases-clearing triple from Johnny Ruiz to cut the deficit to 7-3. Dane Dunning retired the final two batters of the game and clinched a series victory for the top-ranked Gators.

Miami certainly learned this weekend that they have a lot they need to improve on to compete against the top competition in college baseball, but against Alex Faedo on a day where he couldn’t have been better, there wasn’t much the Hurricanes could do.