Cre Finfrock’s first pitch of the afternoon is a single laced into center field. With each pitch after that he walks behind the mound, kicks dirt from the slab on the top of it and takes a deep breath. This process takes about 10 seconds each time.
After these 10 seconds, Finfrock finally looks at the catcher. When he eventually winds up and fires home, the ball sails and skids, not once going where it was intended.
UCF (24-25, 8-10 American) lost the final game of its three-game series with Cincinnati 4-2 at Jay Bergman Field on Sunday. Finfrock tossed four innings of two-run ball and allowed just three hits, but did not strike out a single batter.
Finfrock’s craft has become noticeably laborious. UCF’s ace has turned into a pitcher who seems lost, and is desperately looking for answers. He was pulled from his Friday start a few weeks ago to give him rest, re-inserting him into the rotation for Championship Sunday.
But since that move, Finfrock has hardly looked like an ace. He has pitched 13.1 innings and faced 63 batters across three games, giving up nine earned runs and striking out just eight batters. That is a 6.08 ERA in his last three starts.
The Knights’ ace is no longer that consistent option.
“It’s going to be week-by-week and we’re going to evaluate him [Finfrock] and see where he is moving forward,” head coach Terry Rooney said.
On the other side of the coin, UCF’s offense has been clicking on all cylinders lately with 29 runs in its last three games, all of them wins, and Sunday had opportunities, but some little things got in the way.
In the seventh inning, UCF had Kam Gellinger at first base after a leadoff walk. After an out was made, Eli Putnam hit his second double of the game down the line and Gellinger was sent home to try to score.
He was out by 10 feet.
Hindsight is 20/20, but the send was a poor decision considering the game situation. UCF was down by two runs and it would have been runners at second and third with one out had the runner not been sent. Matthew Mika flied out to center field to end the inning, but had there only been one out, the run from third would have been able to score by way of a sacrifice fly.
Again, hindsight is 20/20, and it is always tough to ask “what if?” But it is a situation that helped decide the game and swung momentum in Cincinnati’s favor for the remainder of the game.
“Credit Cincinnati’s pitcher,” Rooney said. “He did a nice job. They played better than us today. We did some things today in the game of baseball that you just have to do better, because you control them.”
In the eighth inning, Eli Putnam stepped in with a runner at first base and no outs. Putnam inexplicably bunted in order to advance the runner to second base.
With UCF down by two and batting as the tying run, bunting a runner over seems strange, especially considering Putnam had doubled twice in the game off of the same pitcher in his previous at-bats.
UCF did not score in the inning and did not threaten after that.
Harrison Hukari has been splendid for the Knights in conference play with a 1.64 ERA in American Conference games coming into play. After two-and-one-third shutout innings on Friday, Hukari did himself better on Sunday, tossing three innings of scoreless relief.
Rooney has used Hukari excessively, but he has no doubt been the most reliable arm on the staff, and can be used regularly with with effectiveness each time out.
UCF only managed two runs on Sunday on a fielder’s choice by Putnam and an RBI single by Matthew Mika, but with 22 runs in the series and a series win on top of it, there is lots for the team to be happy about.
“We still won the series, and that’s something to build on,” Rooney said.
There is lots to build on and look forward to, but similarly to Finfrock, the Knights have had multiple moments of laboring throughout a long season.
It is May, the semester has ended for the student-athletes and there are still a dozen games left to play for UCF at the minimum.
Finfrock has found himself in a bit of rut. Players and coaches alike are pressing for answers, and when the bats are not going on a particular day, everyone is probably thinking too much about how to fix that.
That all makes sense. There are struggles when it comes to baseball. It is a sport where players will perpetually fail. Every bit of success needs to be milked as much as possible, because in baseball, human error is inevitable and nothing lasts forever.
Especially when there is little margin for error to begin with.
UCF will have a mid-week game against Jacksonville on Wednesday, May 11, to make up for a rainout last week, and then the team will travel to Connecticut to take on the UConn Huskies in a three-game weekend series.
