Tars fall in final game of season

Rollins’ season on the baseball diamond ended with a thud as the Tars fell 0-10 to Florida Southern closing out their 2013 campaign.

The fate of the Tars’ last three-game series — in which they won only one game — mimicked all but two series they had all season in conference play. The Tars (24-23-1, 9-14-1) had shown fight in all of those series, only being swept once all season. But they rarely found the punch to take a series in its entirety.

Case in point: In the final game of the season, with a shot to take down Florida Southern in their final series, the Tars got a man on base in six of the game’s seven innings. They stranded the runner every time. Meanwhile Rollins’ pitching staff was shelled, with starter Isaiah Sakany going only .2 innings and giving up four earned runs. Setup man Ryan McDonald and closer Matt Hendricks pitched 3.1 innings of stellar work, allowing only three hits in the process. But by then it was already too late to save the game, or the season.

That finish was a far cry from the game before, in which the Tars put on a hitting clinic, hammering 10 hits including a double and a homer en route to a 7-5 comeback win.

The underlying numbers of that win-loss undulation led to the Tars having a middling season on the stat sheets as well. They were neither the best nor the worst in the Sunshine State Conference in any categories except two, and those may tell the tale of the team’s season. In stolen bases, the Tars led the conference with 92 — nearly two per game. They also had by far the least homeruns in the conference, with a paltry 12.

After nailing only one homerun every four games, the Tars got one more in their final series, off designated hitter Boston Langley’s bat. It would be the Tars’ last win.