Top-10 series win! No. 10 FSU Baseball clinches with 7-6 win at No. 6 Duke
It looked like it was going to be another heartbreaking loss on the road for the FSU baseball team.
Instead, it became one of the Seminoles’ biggest wins of the season.
Leading 7-6 with one out in the bottom of the ninth inning, and with runners on second and third base, freshman right-hander John Abraham came on and induced a pop-up to first baseman Daniel Cantu and a line-out to second baseman Cal Fisher to preserve the one-run win over No. 6 Duke on Saturday evening.
With the victory, No. 10 FSU (34-8, 13-7) has secured the top-10 series win over the Blue Devils and will go for the sweep on Sunday afternoon in Durham.
The Seminoles, as they’ve done most of the year, raced out to a lead on Saturday thanks to the long ball.
Fisher hit a solo home run in the third and Jamie Ferrer followed with a solo shot in the fourth.
After Duke tied the game on a two-run homer off FSU starter Carson Dorsey, Marco Dinges bombed a three-run homer to right field with two outs in the top of the fifth.
The Seminoles then added two more runs in the sixth, on a two-out RBI double by Alex Lodise and an RBI infield single by Cam Smith two batters later.
That was all the scoring they would do on Saturday against the Duke bullpen, and the seven runs proved to be enough. Barely.
*** Sign up for premium access to Warchant.com including access across the On3 Network ***
After Dorsey’s strong six innings of work (7 hits, 2 earned runs, 1 walk, 8 strikeouts), the Seminoles still had nine more outs to get. Joe Charles got three of them in the seventh without allowing a base runner, but then he didn’t record an out in the bottom of the eighth as Duke loaded the bases with a hit and two walks.
Connor Hults, who recorded the save on Friday night, got FSU out of the inning but not before Duke scored three runs on an RBI groundout and a two-run, two-out single to left.
With a 7-5 lead going to the bottom of the ninth, Andrew Armstrong took over on the mound for the Seminoles. He immediately allowed a home run, a single and then hit a batter. He was able to record a strikeout, but then after a passed ball on a pitch that was well out of the zone, FSU head coach Link Jarrett decided to go to Abraham to try to get the final two outs.
That’s exactly what he did. And the Seminoles, whose last four losses on the road had been by one run, held on this time for a one-run win of their own.
*Talk about this story with other die-hard Florida State baseball fans in the FSU Baseball Forum*
