Starting the week we knew McPherson was out and we had a USM team coming in that had beaten us early in the season and then Ole Miss on the road. Then we find out that Billingsley would be the surprise starter against USM that had everyone a little worried. Well, what happens? MSU comes out and run rules the imposters from Hattiesburg 12-0 pitching a guy that had mostly struggled all year and mostly freshmen and shut them out. I don't know if y'all have seen Christian Ostrander's postgame for that game but he looks like what I would envision Robert E Lee looked like after Gettysburg. Complete shock and awe and just absolutely decimated.
Speaking of Gettysburg- then we have to go to Ole Miss. We decide to pitch Chuck Foster who had struggled all year against Ole Miss here Hunter Elliott. And Foster absolutely steps up and it sounds like he wasn't 100% to start the year anyway. But he goes toe to toe with Elliott and we grind him out of the game and get a lead. Then Ben Davis gives up a home run and it looks like it might all go for naught. But then Chone James stepped up and Ole Miss's RF slipped down and we got the win. Tyler Pitzer picked Davis up and got the win. At that point, I knew we had a good chance to sweep.
Then Saturday comes and Tico was off which apparently means five innings of shutout baseball and 9 strike outs. Jacob Parker stepped up and launched a ball out of the yard along with Frei and freshman Maddox Miller steps up and gives us two solid innings and we win again- 6-1. Just a solid all around win.
Finally came the coup de grace- the Sunday game three which started with MSU hitting 3 home runs off of a guy who hadn't allowed any all year I think. And yeah- he probably wasn't 100% but he pitched pretty well. Ace Reese, Milewski, Jacob Parker again who hit one to their porta potty (classy) in right field, and then you had Andrew Raymond getting into the act as well. Stone was a little amped up I could tell but he gave us 5 innings and only allowed one run which I will take any Sunday. But then the best thing to me was Ben Davis coming in after he got knocked around and was wild on Friday- he comes back today and just blows their ass away in the 7th and then gets their most dangerous hitter out with the bases loaded to get out of a jam he made. That's stepping up and being a DAWG. And then Dane Burns did his job when we asked him to.
You have to give the coaches a lot of credit. Justin Parker has been developing our staff and it seems like when they have a bad game they come back a lot of times like Ben Davis did. Davis and Sweeney have had their struggles and their ERA's are in the 5's. But then you look at guys like Jack Gleason, Dane Burns, Tyler Pitzer, and Maddux Webb- all have ERA's under 2.00. Then what he did with Billingsley and Foster this week plus Bauer coming back after three weeks in the lab. It has been really good to see. And I don't think these guys have hit their ceiling yet except for maybe Tico and that's because he just dominates every time out. There is still room to grow and get better.
And then Kevin McMullen- we are sitting guys that are hitting .400 on the bench in some cases. And no one is complaining or questioning it because there is no reason to because the lineup 1-9 is killing it no matter who we put out there. We talk about Ace Reese struggling- he hits a bomb in his first at bat today and I think he had 3-4 hits this series. I'd have to look but I wouldn't be surprised if he ended up at like .250 for this series. Everyone who we regularly start is hitting over .300 except for Milewski and he's at .241 I think it was right now with 5 bombs. He's good day against Grambling and a hot weekend away from hitting .300 himself. And you have to talk about Jacob Parker. He looks like the next great MSU player. Unreal power but he's having mostly productive at bats and I think someone said he is hitting SEC pitching better than OOC pitching. We don't have too many baserunning mistakes although yeah- I don't think Noah Sulllivan should ever try stealing again especially on a 0-2 count. The biggest thing is I want to see Ryder Woodson improve defensively at SS and Andrew Raymond do a better job of keeping balls in front of him. But that's all I got as far as complaints. Blue blood problems.
I hope this keeps up and we have a special season because the first half has been pretty fun overall.
