Georgia baseball couldn’t escape the sweep against mighty Vanderbilt on Sunday.
The Bulldogs (15-13, 1-8 SEC) dropped their fourth and final game of the week to the No. 4-ranked Commodores (23-5, 9-0) in Nashville.
UGA was outscored 29-10 on the weekend, as it fell 9-2 on Friday and 16-8 on Saturday at the hostile Hawkins Field.
Vanderbilt improved to 15-3 at home with the win and extended their winning streak to 11 games.
Georgia’s hitters, which have kept it competing in high-scoring battles this season, had their worst day of 2023. The Bulldog bats were shut out for the first time since Game Three against Vanderbilt last season.
To be clear, UGA’s hitters also faced one of the country’s top pitching staffs this weekend. The Commodores entered the weekend with the league’s 10th-best team ERA (3.28) and just over 6 hits allowed per nine innings, good for fourth-best in the country.
“There are four or five staffs in this league that are elite elite, and that’s one of them,” Stricklin said on 960 The Ref.
There are five SEC teams in the country’s top 10 in team ERA. All of them are on Georgia’s SEC schedule.
Third baseman Will David had the team’s only extra-base hit, going 1-for-3 hitting with a double.
UGA coach Scott Stricklin did get encouraging outings from all three pitchers after allowing 30 hits for 25 runs in the first two games.
Freshman Matthew Hoskins had a solid outing on Sunday, considering the team he faced in his first career weekend start.
The flame-hurling righthander gave up five hits for a pair of earned runs in 2.2 innings. The Duluth product was Georgia’s newest experiment in the No. 3 weekend starter role after scheduled starter Kolten Smith was shut down for the weekend with shoulder tendinitis.
Charlie Goldstein pitched a career-high 4.1 innings of relief for Hoskins, also surrendering five hits and two earned runs.
The redshirt junior then handed the final inning to freshman Leighton Finley, who retired the side in order.
“It’s encouraging, we saw some guys step up and throw the ball well this weekend, just not well enough,” Stricklin said. “When you play a team as good as Vanderbilt, you have to play clean and you have to play really well, and we just didn’t play well enough.”
Georgia will try to recover some momentum in its midweek game at Kennesaw State. The Bulldogs will take on the Owls (12-13, 4-4 ASUN) at 6 p.m. on Tuesday at Stillwell Baseball Stadium.
