No. 8 Clemson baseball earns walk-off win against No. 16 FSU, takes series
Clemson infielder Jordan Greene weighs about 165 pounds but has always looked up to power hitters rather than smaller, speedy guys.
The junior, who entered Monday’s game with five career home runs, did his best slugger impersonation in the ninth inning Monday night.
Greene launched the first pitch he saw in the bottom of the ninth inning well over the wall in left field to lift the Tigers to a 5-4 win against Florida State at Doug Kingsmore Stadium.
Greene entered the game in the bottom of the seventh inning as a pinch hitter before delivering perhaps the biggest hit of Clemson's season in the ninth as the eighth-ranked Tigers rallied past No. 16 FSU to earn the series win.
“Jordan’s a kid that’s in the third year in our program. He’s played a lot of baseball for us and he came up with the biggest at bat of the year,” Tigers coach Monte Lee said. “That’s the biggest at bat of the year for us to this point.”
Clemson (36-12, 19-8) trailed 4-2 with two outs in the seventh inning when Seth Beer homered to tie the game at 4.
The lefty hit an 0-2 pitch for an opposite field shot, setting up Greene's heroics. Beer’s homer was his second of the series and 14th on the year.
“He’s done it time and time again. In the three years that I’ve been with Seth I’m running out of fingers to count the big home runs that he’s hit in big situations,” Lee said. “Any time I talk to scouts or I talk to people about the legend of Seth Beer, what is the legend of Seth Beer? The legend of Seth Beer is how many clutch home runs he’s hit in his career…. He just has a knack for zoning everything out and locking in and getting a good pitch to hit and obviously hitting it pretty hard.”
Clemson took a 2-0 lead in the third inning on a two-run homer by Logan Davidson before the Tigers made uncharacteristic mistakes defensively and allowed FSU (32-16, 14-12) to grab the lead.
The Seminoles cut the lead to 2-1 in the fourth inning after an error allowed the leadoff man to reach and Rhett Aplin followed with an RBI double.
FSU took a 4-2 lead in the fifth inning as the Tigers committed a pair of errors and had a passed ball, leading to three unearned runs being scored.
Clemson starter Jake Higginbotham allowed four runs in 4 2/3 innings of work, but none of the runs were earned.
Reliever Ryan Miller pitched 2 1/3 scoreless innings, while fellow reliever Carson Spiers earned the win with 2 scoreless innings to close out the game.
“I don’t know if I could be more proud, first of all, of my pitching staff,” Lee said. “You look at what Jake Higginbotham did, Ryan Miller and Carson Spiers did… We made four errors tonight and in the one inning we gave up the big inning there, but our guys stayed calm. We kept making pitches.”
Cal Raleigh had three hits for Florida State, while Steven Wells and Aplin each doubled and drove in a run.
The Tigers return to action Wednesday night when they host Western Carolina at 6:30 p.m., before Clemson hosts an out of conference series against Austin Peay this weekend.
This story was originally published May 7, 2018 at 10:07 PM with the headline "No. 8 Clemson baseball earns walk-off win against No. 16 FSU, takes series."