Todd4Governor's Cups in a row thoughts.
I was there for those who couldn't watch at home. Not nearly as exciting as last year but that would be hard to top. Still a great atmosphere and a lot of fun.
First of all let me say thank you to the MSU baseball team. Winning this game means a lot to me and as a Jacksonian who is a huge baseball fan I always will. I suffered through five losses in a row so that makes me appreciate the four in a row a lot. Needless to say I hope we equal the five in a row next year and then top it after that. Jake Mangum is now the Governor of Starkville. Good news Ole Miss- you don't have to face him in the Governor's Cup anymore. Bad news- you have three more games against him left.
This win means a lot of things. It's MSU's longest winning streak in the series. It means Ole Miss's great recruiting class will have a losing record in the game and some will leave without winning it. It means that Bianco now has a losing record in the series as well at the moment. It also means that we have beaten them now with four different coaches in a row.
I thought our pitchers did well. Plumlee stepped up with a quality start. Not sure what that means for Sunday. I'm not sure how many he threw tonight but if he does go I wouldn't expect him to go very long. While it is known that Ole Miss hits left handed pitching very poorly they hit right handed pitching well. Tonight we held them down with four right handed pitchers and Trysten Barlow only throwing one inning. That makes what they did even more impressive. Colby White should be the closer and I thought Leiblet threw well in what was a tough match up for a pitcher with his style. Barlow did well as I would have expected given the splits. 9K's and four walks while allowing 8 hits but only one run shows how we battled all night.
Our hitting approach was much better. Their starting pitcher was on- give him credit. He was locating his fastball and slider. Even though he was shutting us down I felt like we were for the most part taking decent at bats. He finally hung a slider and Rowdey made him pay. Once we got him out of the game we unloaded on their bullpen. I thought the turning point in the game was Ole Miss making another cardinal baseball mistake like last year. Servideo got thrown out at third to end the fifth inning and then our offense got going. Good job by Skelton to throw him out. Last year he doesn't make that play. The other big play was Foscue's double where their right fielder dove and missed it. That was a tough break for them. After that we had a big inning and put the game away which included Ole Miss throwing the ball around the park.
Skelton is easily our most improved player overall. Ole Miss likes to run and he kept them at bay most of the night. Tanner had a tough night with Philips their starter plus he got hit a couple of times. He got the hit that started the Ole Miss defensive circus though. Foscue got the MVP but it really could have gone to a number of players. He needs to work a little bit more at second with Westburg but he makes is better defensively there. Same with Gilbert at third. Except he also makes us a better hitting team as well. Westburg didn't get any hits but he scored a couple of runs and drove in one.
Rowdey's home run got us going as I said. Mangum had a good finale. He had a hit got hit by a pitch and caused havoc on the bases all night. Very appropriate that he caught the ball for the final out of the game. Macnamee toughed it out and got a hit. Cumbest didn't look overmatched to me. He hit a missle to the opposite field that hung up in the air a little too long. When he puts it all together he is going to be really good.
Going forward- our RPI is now 12. Almost all of our games are against Q1 teams. We need to pull for USM and Alabama to get their RPI up a little bit so that we can get five more Q1's. If we play La Tech later and win that would potentially be another one too. We have 33 wins. If we go 7-6 or 7-7 with La Tech on the schedule that gets us to 40. Georgia is a huge series for us. But we will be at home and I think we are getting our confidence back now. Just don't pat them on the back! I'm very curious to see what we do Sunday. I wouldn't totally rule out Plumlee though. Especially with no midweek game next week. I kind of want to see Cerentola get a shot if we win the first two.
But wonderful night for me- we won the Governor's Cup and the Cardinals are now in first place in the NL Central with guys like Carlos Martinez and Alex Reyes coming soon on the mend. I'm going to ask off of work for the first weekend of the regionals as well. Hope that works out for me! #HailState
