Michigan Baseball Ready To Face Florida State In College World Series

After defeating Texas Tech 5-3 Saturday, the Wolverines advanced to face Florida State. The Seminoles are coached by Mike Martin who is retiring after the season. Martin is the all-time winningest coach in Division 1 baseball history and has been the head coach at Florida State for the past 40 years.

Before Bakich came to Ann Arbor, he coached at Maryland where he routinely faced Martin.

“Seeing first-hand how coach Martin coached, ran his program, how his players played, my respect level just went through the roof for him,” Bakich told the Detroit Free Press. “Those three years, competing against coach Martin, being in the ACC coaches meetings with [former Clemson head coach] Jack Leggett, Mike Martin, [Miami head coach] Jim Morris, I mean, those are experiences that I will always cherish, with some of the greatest coaches in the game.”

Martin had plenty of positive things to say about Bakich as well.

“Erik Bakich has done a great job at the University of Michigan,” Martin told the Free Press. “I think the main thing is just getting his point across to his team of the important attributes of being a winning team. He’s a guy that’s going to get the most out of his players. He’s a very knowledgeable guy, he coached under a very good coach in Jack Leggett and Tim Corbin, he’s learned from the best and it’s a credit to him to sift through what he liked and maybe some of the things he didn’t like, and that’s the mark of a good coach.”

While Martin might have the experience, the Wolverines are playing their best baseball at the perfect time.

“The whole team is firing on all cylinders and we have been since that second game of the Big Ten Tournament,” senior infielder Jimmy Kerr said in an MGoBlue.com video. “Makes it easy to have competitive at-bats when the guys in front of you and behind you, you have a lot of trust in them to do the same.”

Monday night, Florida State is likely to start sophomore right-handed pitcher CJ Van Eyk to the Van Eyk is 10-3 this season with a 3.80 ERA and 120 strikeouts. In three of their last six games, the Seminoles have scored 10 more runs, but they only scored one run in their victory Saturday over Arkansas.

Michigan heads into its next College World Series game with a lot of confidence. The Wolverines are treating the matchup with the Seminoles as just another game.

“It’s the same game, even though there are 25,000 people here,” sophomore outfielder Jesse Franklin told The Detroit News. “Everyone has developed a routine throughout the year to get locked in, stay focused, and play their best.”

Franklin and the entire team has been comfortable in the moment, especially against Texas Tech.

“We played loose and we had fun out there,” Franklin said. “That’s what I’ve noticed with this team. We don’t really get nervous. It’s just loose and free kind of feeling with everyone in this group. That helps a lot.”

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