Corey Clark: Dorsey’s day was good for FSU, great for him and really fun to watch

In a season full of really cool moments, what happened for Florida State on Friday afternoon at Dick Howser Stadium was maybe the coolest of them all.

It’s at least in the conversation.

Because of the player. The circumstances. And the stage.

Carson Dorsey gave up eight runs in two brief outings last week in Charlotte during the ACC Tournament. He recorded a grand total of three outs. He was, to put it bluntly, awful in his first postseason experience with the Seminoles.

So for him, after that performance, to come out on Friday — in the biggest game he’s ever pitched — and proceed to pitch the best he’s ever pitched for as long as he’s ever pitched, was just about the neatest thing that’s happened at Howser all year.

Heck, the dude got four standing ovations, including after he gave way to Brennan Oxford for the final out in the ninth inning of a 7-2 win against Stetson.

We’ll get to what Dorsey’s outing might mean long-term for this Florida State team, but for just a second, let’s focus on the short-term.

That was a remarkable, wonderful, incredible bounce-back effort from the lefty when his team absolutely needed it most. And it should be celebrated. Because it’s not easy to go from awful to awesome in a week. Bad outings can linger. Especially with young pitchers.

Instead, Dorsey allowed one earned run in 8 2/3 innings to get his team into the winner’s bracket of the Tallahassee Regional. That deserves an all-time hat tip.

“They say pitching is about having short-term memory,” Dorsey said. “You know your stuff is good when you go out there. It’s about executing in that moment.”

Afterward, head coach Link Jarrett commented on his lefty’s toughness and how the Seminoles believed he’d be able to bounce back from those two bad outings up in Charlotte. Jarrett wasn’t asked if he believed in the junior pitcher THIS much, coming within one out of a complete game. But it was obvious Jarrett trusted Dorsey.

Because not only did he choose him to start Game 1 of the regional, but he decided to stay with him after two runners got on base in the seventh. And then he trusted him for the eighth. And then to go back out again in the ninth. All the while getting the kid more standing O’s than a State of the Union speech.

“When you’re up there pitching and you have the crowd behind you, it gives you all the energy in the world,” Dorsey said. “To want to keep pitching and want to execute your stuff to the highest capacity. There’s no difference in the actual pitching. But there’s a huge difference in the energy behind you. And I love it.”

So, yes, it was just a really fun day at the ball park for the Seminoles. The offense wasn’t great, but good enough. The defense had two bizarre errors — by Drew Faurot and James Tibbs — but was solid otherwise.

It was the pitching that was the headline.

And when you’re trying to make some serious noise in the postseason, when you’re trying to go on a run, when you’re trying to win your first home regional since 2017, man, you can’t overestimate how important a performance like Dorsey’s can be.

It doesn’t guarantee the Seminoles win this thing. Heck, it doesn’t guarantee they win another game.

But having your No. 2 starter (who actually started the year in the bullpen, by the way, but had to be inserted into the rotation following injuries) to get you 26 outs sets you up as perfectly as you can be set up for the rest of the weekend.

You’ve got your All-American lefty on the mound on Saturday. He should get you plenty of outs, too. And if you can win that game, or even if you can’t, the rest of your staff is so well-rested that you have yourself as good a shot as you possibly can to string together a bunch of outs on Sunday and beyond.

“It was such a helpful response he had today,” Florida State’s second-year head coach said. “We’re going into this (regional) and you almost have to prepare for if it doesn’t go well — what’s the maneuver to get things back on track? And I really felt once he got into the fourth and fifth inning of this, it got better and better. …

“And if you had run through three or four arms today, it makes things more difficult. … So, when you can establish a start like that, it calms everything down in the bullpen and sets you up for a much more efficient pathway with the pitching.”

Jarrett calls it an, “efficient pathway.”

I call it, “really cool.”

We’re different people, folks! We see the game differently!

But no matter what words you use to describe what Dorsey did on Friday afternoon, it was a huge shot in the arm for this pitching staff and this team.

And it was really, really cool to see.

Contact senior writer Corey Clark at corey@warchant.com.

*Talk about this story with other die-hard Florida State baseball fans in the FSU Baseball Forum*

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