FSU’s 2026 baseball season came to an end on Monday against the St. John’s Red Storm in the Tallahassee Regional. The Seminoles went 0-2 against St. John’s over the weekend, failing to make it to the Super Regional round for the first time in three years.
FSU had a 2-0 lead, but St. John’s flipped the game with a grand slam. The Seminoles scored two runs in the ninth inning to make it a 5-4 game, but were unable to get the tying run across. FSU struggled with base runners on throughout the tournament, something that has plagued them all season.
Head coach Link Jarrett spoke with the media after the game and admitted that this team was special to him, due to the fight they showed all season.
“So you wish it had been easier at times, but it just was a galvanized, tough battalion that seemed to go out there and go into baseball battle as well as any team I’ve seen,” he said. “That’s why I feel the way I feel.”
He also discussed leaving John Abraham in, the injuries they faced, Myles Bailey, and more. Here’s everything Jarrett had to say in his postgame press conference.
Opening statement
Very appreciative of our fans, I think we have the most engaged fans in the country every night. I’ve coached or played in every imaginable stadium across the country, the biggest games that have ever been played in some cases, and our folks deliver an unmatched engagement with game, players, coaches, and I’m very appreciative of that. We ask them to do it 40 times, 40 times a year, not 7, not 10, 40 times, and for those people to be present and accounted for that often is pretty remarkable, just haven’t seen it like this.
I’ve seen a lot of fans in stadiums, I haven’t seen it where they’re this connected to what is going on. I’m appreciative of President McCullough, Stephen Ponder, who is my sport oversight. I’ve done a lot of attempts to improve the facility and takes help and he is by my side as I try to raise the money to give him (the players) the best chance to have a facility that allows him to move forward as players, very important, thank you Stephen. Michael Alford is as supportive as any athletic director can be for baseball. He’s the chairman of the baseball committee, he’s in our dugout every chance he gets, follows the game, supports the program, the players. When you’ve got that type of administrative support for baseball, and the fans appreciate it, it becomes really special.
These guys absolutely fought, never stopped, I don’t know that we ever saw our personnel intact to provide the opportunity to see everybody full speed ahead health-wise, that was a part of our story this year, we all understand that, it is tricky to overcome that and I think we did it, I think we did it. It’s disappointing to be having this conversation no doubt, it’s not one I’ve had often, but I will never forget the fight of this group, what he (Cal Fisher) fought through and at times endured to try to continue to move along as a player. Nobody deserves this moment personally for the quality of play that he displayed on top of what he, I can’t imagine, felt like and I wholeheartedly trust him, he knows everything that we do, he knows that he can teach it, I don’t know how many people I can say that about, nobody works harder, nobody does it better, student, person, player, I’m happy he had the Cal Fisher weekend that we know he has.
The locker room life, the hardest thing, I can’t explain it, is what that feels like in there on most days and the polar opposite of what it is now. Good group of seniors, it’s hard to have stability in this era and you need the older guys to provide, even if they’re migrating in from other places, you need maturity and that usually leads to some stability from the top. It’s really important, good group, good group of guys, mature group. Sometimes you have seniors that aren’t in that category that you thought.
To think that Ben Barrett put this down for the better part of three years and picked it up and looked better than when he actually put it down, if that’s possible. So that tells you the level of his focus of the game and how hard he physically works to be able to just pick it up on the fly like we did and perform the way he performed, that was incredible. That was absolutely part of our story and it was incredible. It was incredible. So happy for him.
Proud of our starting pitcher this year, it’s hard to build that the way we built it and keep it intact. We were very protective of those athletes because I know what lies ahead for them and it is a fragile state when you’re looking at throwing the baseball in this era we’re in right now. It’s a fragile state and proud of those guys and getting through it and the stability they provided and the bullpen that we had kept us in it as we fought to figure out ways to try to string enough good at-bats together and position the team to have a chance to score some perfect numbers and it wasn’t easy. It was not easy.
There’s a lot of really good baseball ahead for these guys, some in college and then you’re going to have future major league players that you’ve watched on that field every chance you’ve had to watch this. There’s future major league players.
And that is part of why they are here, to develop and become that. And I think that the draft will play out and show you how talented and how complete some of those individuals were and some that you didn’t get to see finish seasons.
Hurt for Myles still. That was the most dynamic bat I’ve ever seen. I would have put it in, played against David Ortiz coming along. You’re talking about just powerful capabilities that’s in a very exclusive group of players hitters, you still hurt for him.
You can say a lot of things about, say a lot of things about the group. Nothing’s higher on the list than they’ll fight. They’ll fight.
St. John’s is a good team. Saw it. They earned this. Great variety offensively, great physicality, spots in the order. Arm talent. Variety of arms, just like variety of physicality with the different type of player they have and they played a really great regional. Tough. Played with a lot of poise. Mike had them ready to go. They’re good. Complete. It’s a complete team. It’s a complete group. So hats off to them for how they played.
Thank our managers. We have a group of guys that they do things in the sport that didn’t exist five years ago, ten years ago. The equipment, the technology, the machinery, the video, it didn’t exist. Now you have to have talented individuals that help support these guys every day because the coaches alone can’t possibly do it.
Can’t be in that many spots and manage that many things. So I’m very appreciative of their work because they’re here as much or more than the players. Bat girls, how they help keep this thing rolling.
Those girls sat here just this weekend and how much time they put in and effort to provide the support to have an efficient baseball game because these things are long and if you don’t have people to help manage the nuances of the game and help the officials, it can get really tedious. And that group, exceptional feel for the game.
On leaving John Abraham in with the bases loaded
We trust him and we thought he had the mixture of things that could give our besties some problems. I know the inning itself did not evolve properly in terms of thinking he had the stuff, but it still checked out. We trust him and I don’t think we’re in the conversation that we were in towards the end of the year without him.
And we knew what we were facing the rest of this day and you’re playing to try to get through it and keep going and the acquisition of outs with people that were able to see him continue to spring and build, that was part of it too. But we have a high level of trust for him. And I know there were things he was battling through, and I can see some of the, it gets a little more methodical things clicking for him to do.
It just slows the hair and I can see him fighting through it, but he still had the breaking ball. I think the breaking ball today was actually a little bit better than it was in his last outing. He hadn’t been out there in a few weeks.
There is something to be said for feeding him the fight a little bit and feeling better the longer you’re in it. And that was a change-up that he hit. John has developed an incredible change-up.
That guy rifled it. That’s just part of the game and an unfortunate part of the story.
His message to the team afterwards
Well, the hurt is something you can never describe. And I hadn’t been in a dugout that was that eerie and that silent after a loss like that. In the locker room it was worse.
And overcoming some of the injuries of the position players is also part of our story to hopefully not ever repeat something like that. So you do have your arsenal on the roster to compete because the rosters are only going to get smaller. So we have to manage those bumps that we had to hope that you have the group that you put together to perform able to actually get to the end of the race. And we didn’t even get close to the end of the race with a group.
That’s part of it. But my message was the fight of the group is something that I felt with this team more than any other team. Why that was, it’s an accumulation of the tenacity of the guys in the locker room.
That’s where the fight comes from. And they all pull for each other and they want to win. And that’s not hocus pocus stuff. You can see it. I think the fans felt that. And I think that’s why they enjoyed it so much.
And I know the players enjoyed that aspect of their group. And I know their locker room life was vibrant. I think it got more vibrant as we went through the season.
Which if I see the guys enjoying what they’re doing and I see them fight, then the moxie of the team is where you want it. Now the details, I have a list of details of things that came up that did cost us. Some of them inexplicable and so minor, but yet proved to be pivotal.
And that’s not lost. I track it. And some of it we address as it happens and go. And some of it are things that you try to incorporate maybe right out of the gate next year. Clock stuff, pitch comp stuff, weird things that are new to the game that have come up that did bite us. So all of that tells you that you want to have a different conversation next year and how.
On if he felt different about this team
You’re reading it exactly right. Exactly right. This was tough. This was tough.
Day in, day out tough. Figuring out the right way to design it, construct it, how to try to manage it when you’re, you know, we’re running seven right-handed hitters up there. And with that pitching staff and what we deal with in this, that’s not a real positive way to go into it with the quality of the breaking balls and things the right-handed pitchers feature in that.
But this was different. This was different. When you sit out there with Myles when that happens and the heartbreak you have for him and knowing what that’s going to take to move along and recover from and that he was such a likable figure in the program and nationally, and nationally.
So moving beyond that and watching these guys manage themselves to be the best version of themselves they could be to keep things going. And DeLam was out. Estes played four or five games and was hitting .570. And he was starting to figure it out.
So you wish it had been easier at times, but it just was a galvanized, tough battalion that seemed to go out there and go into baseball battle as well as any team I’ve seen. That’s why I feel the way I feel.
On their offensive approach
Pitch recognition, the decision-making through the at-bat is part of the approach and the essence of the approach. And it was tough.
I did not see a lot of management of swing decision recognition, not connected to swing. The swing is one part, but what you swing at and when and what you’re thinking and anticipating and what you’re willing to adjust to throughout the course of that four-tenths of a second it takes for that ball to travel, it’s very tricky. And we tried to incorporate some new things to help with that. It wasn’t consistent.
And the stuff, across the board at this level and beyond the baseball, the pitching has never been more challenging on the hitter. But that is something that we’re going to have to continue to hone and try to develop a keener sense of applied pitch selection and recognition of the things that are coming at you that tell you, A, what it is, B, where it’s going, and C, is it something that I should offer at? That was the biggest hurdle we had. And when you get that right-handed, I do feel like it’s easier for pitchers to settle in when there’s only in this there were two left-handed bats that forced a visual adjustment in any way based on what’s going on.
I know the right-handers are different, but I think as it starts to roll, they’re very comfortable. So it’s unfortunate that our left-handed bats were not in the equation for us, and that does factor in. You know the lineups we have where we have right-left, right-left. It makes it harder. It makes it much harder to bullpen, match up against. That’s the whole concept of it.
So I think that was part of it. So then the right-handed hitters become a little more vulnerable because of the simplicity of attack that the opposing pitcher may feel as the lineup rolls and the game rolls.
On how he processes the season ending, transfer portal opening
I’m open to advice.
The calendar and the landscape is almost unthinkably difficult as to what we have to deal with in baseball with a portal opening today. Somebody told me there’s thousands of players in it today. Then the draft in mid-July.
Are we talking 9, 10, 11, 12? How many of these guys? In all of my imagination of what it would be like to coach, never could you dream of this is where it’s landed in terms of trying to construct a roster to produce a functional team. It is hard. And the inconsistencies of year to year and who is successful or not, it has escalated to the point of it’s very difficult to even predict.
And even once it’s together, then there’s things that come up that make it extremely hard to have consistency of having three regionals in a row. It’s very hard. I think we had 23 or 24 new players.
The draft is going to be very similar this year. And you have your group of seniors, off they go.
Look at what could come over the next month for us as coaches as we try to construct this. It is as hard as anything I ever thought I would do as a college baseball coach.
This article originally appeared on FSU Wire: FSU baseball coach Link Jarrett discusses losing to St. John’s