AVON PARK \u2014 South Florida State College\u2019s baseball team had a frustrating day at the ballpark, losing 21-9 and 7-6 to Palm Beach State College.<\/p>\n
History repeated itself in more ways than one. Not only was it the second series where the Panthers gave up 21 runs in an opener, but it also marked a second consecutive dropped Sun-Lakes Conference series.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been difficult at times for head coach Rick Hitt seeing some of the pitching performances they\u2019ve put up, but he also gave credit to the opposing Panthers for scoring 28 runs across two games.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re pesky offensively,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019re aggressive, they swing early. You take your hat off to them. They just swung the bat very well (Thursday) in both games, and that\u2019s the way it is.\u201d<\/p>\n
Seventeen of Palm Beach\u2019s 21 runs came across two innings in game one, including a 10-spot in the sixth to put the game out of reach.<\/p>\n
Evan Garcia struggled again as the starter in this six-inning contest, as he gave up nine runs against (eight earned) with seven hits and four walks in 3.1 innings. Hitt said they have to work to get the former FCSAA Pitcher of the Week right. Jason Vasquez and Trent Adrian also put up forgettable efforts with six runs allowed by the pair.<\/p>\n
In game two, South Florida put up a more competitive effort despite a difficult outing from Gehrig Graham pitching.<\/p>\n
South Florida State still couldn\u2019t pull out the win as it left a small village on the base paths, struggling to drive in runners when they were in scoring position. It dropped the contest with the tying run in scoring position in the ninth. The Panthers totaled 15 hits by their count with only six runs to show for it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI honestly thought in game two we had some big spots where we had some guys up with people on base, and we didn\u2019t cash in,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd we had some of those same guys up with nobody on base early in the game. And we found a way to manage a knock. So we have to be ready to adapt to the ability to work hard to have relevant at-bats.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AVON PARK \u2014 South Florida State College\u2019s baseball team had a frustrating day at the ballpark, losing 21-9…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":172645,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29,31374,634,110],"class_list":["post-172644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-highlands_news-sun","tag-local","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172644"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172644\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/172645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}