Florida State’s starting pitching has been delivering quality starts, going deeper into games — just in time for the postseason.
Wes Mendes, Trey Beard and Bryson Moore each pitched six or more innings for the first time in an ACC series this spring as FSU took two of three games against Miami. Mendes has been consistent throughout 2026, Beard has improved down the stretch and Moore tossed a season-best 7.2 innings in the regular-season finale.
Now the intensity ramps up for the Seminoles in the ACC Tournament, which features a relatively new single-elimination format. The ACC adopted the change, shifting away from pool play and into the format in 2025.
“I looked at winning one game at a time all year to try to get to this position,” FSU coach Link Jarrett said Thursday morning. “Now, the heightened sense of pitch execution and damage, and in one game, one swing can turn it, so I just think it's a heightened sense of these are elimination games, it's a heightened sense of pitch execution, it's a heightened sense of how you defend, the readiness in the bullpen.
“We’re fresh. So you have every healthy option available.”
Jarrett said Mendes, the ACC pitcher of the year, will start for FSU against Pittsburgh on Friday at 3 p.m. (ACC Network). The FSU-Pitt game was moved up from 7 p.m. due to rain in the forecast later in Charlotte, N.C.
It’s not clear if the Seminoles will have right-hander John Abraham (oblique) available. One of the league’s top relievers, Abraham missed the Miami series due to injury.
“John is on his way back,” Jarrett said. “I don’t know if it’s realistic or warranted to try to force that right now. Obviously, we'd love to have him, but you know, there is more to come.”
FSU (38-16) got to this point as the No. 3 seed in the ACC Tournament, and a potential top-8 national seed, on the back of its starting pitching. Mendes has pitched six or more innings in his last five starts, including wins over Notre Dame, Pittsburgh and Clemson. Beard has gone six or more innings against Pittsburgh and Miami, while Moore gave up just a run in six innings against Clemson before allowing two runs in 7.2 innings (a loss) to the Hurricanes.
“They have gotten better and better and better,” Jarrett said. “It’s their management of themselves, the pitch shaping, you’re seeing it in real time. They are supportive of what I feel is good, solid, for the most part, defense. The fielding percentage probably isn’t top of the food chain. But I do think the athleticism and some of the plays that are made do support that and that allows the starting pitchers to lengthen it out.
“That’s the expectation. It’s also very difficult to get to that point at any level of baseball not to mention this era of college baseball that we’re in right now with the dynamic offense, the strike zone.”
How the FSU starters, and the relievers, handle the intensity of the postseason will go a long way in determining how long the Seminoles play in the ACC Tournament. And that will continue next week as regionals begin.
But it’s critical in Charlotte as the tournament has seen some high-scoring games. Of the eight games played on Tuesday and Wednesday, five featured winning teams that put up 11 or more runs.
Jarrett has a number of theories for why we’ve seen the scoring output, from veteran hitters to a ballpark where it’s just 315 feet down the right-field line.
“When it is hot and there's a little wind pushing out, it absolutely flies,” Jarrett said. “In right field, the roof is actually the fence. So it's not, ’Is it going over the fence? is it going over the roof in right field and onto the road?’ That's how it plays, and I'm sure there are days when it blows in a little bit or is cooler. I've played a good amount of games here, I know our stadium, some of the stadiums in the league, inside and out. I'm not that familiar with it, but when I was out there the last few days, watching, it was pushing, it was hot, it was jumping.”
Teams in the ACC Tournament are also using a “professional-type, tightly wound ball,” Jarrett said. He also mentioned that college baseball is trending older with more mature players (as well as transfers).
Jarrett has noted throughout the season that he feels the college strike zone is tighter than it has been in prior years. When asked by a reporter on Thursday about the SEC Tournament’s use of automatic balls and strikes technology (ABS), which is an appeal system now used in MLB, Jarrett said he understood the challenges facing the college game as they try to implement the system. Among them is that every player would need to be measured for their own strike zone. But he also indicated the zone for the SEC Tournament measured a little bit taller.
Still, Jarrett said he knows umpiring is a tough job but was very supportive of the ABS technology. He wanted to see it used at this week’s ACC Tournament if it could be pulled off, but understood why it didn’t happen.
“It's in every major league game,” Jarrett said. “I think the sooner we align with what they do in major league baseball, I think it helps. There's a reason it's there, and it provides for me, the players some accountability and ownership in what's happening on the field that they control. This wasn't going to be us controlling it, it was them.”
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