It's been a long week (for me anyway) but we've made it to Thursday. UK and Florida lace them up tonight at 7 on the SEC Network. This is the second week in a row that UK has a Thursday thru Saturday series and it is another tough one. Florida is coming off a series win against Vanderbilt and they are starting to look like the team they were projected to be to start the year.
Florida likely starts Franco Aleman tonight. Interestingly, Florida pitching has struggled this year. It was believed that Florida would have an absolute stud of a pitching staff, but that just hasn’t come to fruition. Aleman has started on 5 Fridays and carries a 5.05 ERA in league play. Tommy Mace starts in game 2 and he’s also struggling this year with a 5.77 ERA. Hunter Barco is likely to go on Sunday and he has done the best with a 4.14 ERA in 7 starts. So, 2 of UK’s starters have better ERAs overall than 2 of the Florida pitchers. As a team, in conference, Florida has a team ERA of 4.82 while UK’s is 4.40. Still, overall, Florida does a pretty solid job of limiting damage. Opponents only hit .264 against them in conference and Florida has outscored opponents 128 to 114.
With the sticks, UF has done better in terms of average hitting .271 while UK is hitting .261. UF averages about 6 runs a game while UK averages about 5.5, so pretty similar there. An interesting thing is that UK hits .261 but opponents have hit .284 against UK’s pitching. Florida has hit better than its opponents while UK hasn’t. That is concerning for UK.
All in all, should be an interesting series. UK is coming off a tough weekend while Florida is riding high after a huge series win at home against Vandy. Florida has climbed their way into something like 6th in the league while UK is sitting around something like 10th. UK needs to steal at least one win in this series to keep their post season dreams alive. There hasn't been a sweep in the series since 2005.
Florida likely starts Franco Aleman tonight. Interestingly, Florida pitching has struggled this year. It was believed that Florida would have an absolute stud of a pitching staff, but that just hasn’t come to fruition. Aleman has started on 5 Fridays and carries a 5.05 ERA in league play. Tommy Mace starts in game 2 and he’s also struggling this year with a 5.77 ERA. Hunter Barco is likely to go on Sunday and he has done the best with a 4.14 ERA in 7 starts. So, 2 of UK’s starters have better ERAs overall than 2 of the Florida pitchers. As a team, in conference, Florida has a team ERA of 4.82 while UK’s is 4.40. Still, overall, Florida does a pretty solid job of limiting damage. Opponents only hit .264 against them in conference and Florida has outscored opponents 128 to 114.
With the sticks, UF has done better in terms of average hitting .271 while UK is hitting .261. UF averages about 6 runs a game while UK averages about 5.5, so pretty similar there. An interesting thing is that UK hits .261 but opponents have hit .284 against UK’s pitching. Florida has hit better than its opponents while UK hasn’t. That is concerning for UK.
All in all, should be an interesting series. UK is coming off a tough weekend while Florida is riding high after a huge series win at home against Vandy. Florida has climbed their way into something like 6th in the league while UK is sitting around something like 10th. UK needs to steal at least one win in this series to keep their post season dreams alive. There hasn't been a sweep in the series since 2005.
