Starting pitching stellar as Miami Hurricanes sweep struggling Seminoles

The University of Miami baseball team did something this weekend it hadn’t done since 2001.

The Hurricanes swept their rival, the Florida State Seminoles, in a three-game weekend series.

There’s a much bigger accomplishment Miami hasn’t done since that season - win a national championship.

And if they’re going to have any chance of seriously contending for one this season, the Hurricanes will need more performances from their starting rotation like the ones they delivered for three days against FSU.

Alejandro Rosario continued Miami’s string of strong starts over three days against the Seminoles, striking out a career-high 12 batters over a career-high eight innings (98 pitches) to help the Hurricanes finish off the sweep of the struggling Seminoles with a 13-4 victory at Alex Rodriguez Park at Mark Light Field.

“Something I’ve improved on that I didn’t used to do in the past was when I got hit around, I would go down a bad path,” said Rosario, who induced 10 groundouts. “I’ve just been working on that and just flipping the switch to a new game. My team came up the next inning and picked me up and that’s what a good team does.”

The 12 strikeouts was also the most by an ACC pitcher so far this season in a conference game.

“I think just confidence-wise, I’m just attacking hitters and it just got better as the game went on,” Rosario said. “I hit a little bump in the road, but my team picked me up.”

The Hurricanes won their fourth in a row, bouncing back from being swept in three games last weekend at Wake Forest while extending Florida State’s program-record losing streak to nine in a row.

Miami (19-9, 8-4 ACC) entered the series having lost six of its previous games against the Seminoles (12-15, 3-9 ACC), who have now dropped 12 of their past 13.

UM coach Gino DiMare had stressed the need for his rotation to provide more length and quality starts, something it hasn’t been able to do consistently so far this season.

Rosario’s outing followed Karson Ligon’s eight shutout innings and three hits allowed in Miami’s 11-0 win Friday and Gage Ziehl’s one run allowed over 7 ⅔ innings in Saturday’s 3-2 win. Miami starters walked a combined five over 23 2/3 innings and struck out a combined 27 batters.

“I can’t recall the last time we had three starters with all three guys pitching into the eighth,” DiMare said. “Those are the three best starts I can recall here. Definitely, they set the tone for the weekend. Even Alejandro having that hiccup in the fourth, he settled down and retired the next 14 batters. He got a little flustered when he had a 20-second (clock) violation, but I do think they did a good job of attacking hitters.”

Rosario retired nine of the first 11 batters he faced, allowing only one hit before running into trouble in that fourth inning.

After giving up back-to-back singles to Jaime Ferrer and Jordan Carrion, Rosario walked Colton Vincent, loading the bases. Cam Smith cleared them with a triple and then scored on a wild pitch two batters later.

But Miami’s bats picked up Rosario immediately in the bottom of the inning when Zach Levenson and Blake Cyr hit back-to-back home runs to put the Hurricanes ahead 7-4. Levenson’s two-run homer to center was his second this week after hitting a three-run walk-off homer against FIU last Tuesday. Dominic Pitelli added more in the eighth with a three-run homer to right field.