Mississippi State has lost its first three series in Southeastern Conference play and has its work cut out for it if MSU is going to turn things around.
Stae faces a gauntlet of top teams over the final two months with six of its final seven SEC series coming against teams in the D1Baseball.com RPI top 20.
First up on that brutal slate is a three-game series with No. 3 Ole Miss starting tonight at 6:30 and continuing Saturday at 2 p.m. and Sunday at 1 p.m.
The Rebels (26-4, 6-3 SEC) are currently seventh in the RPI standings and are enjoying a bounce-back year after missing out on the postseason entirely in 2017.
“Their kids are older,” said MSU interim head coach Gary Henderson. “They played a bunch of freshmen last year. Their kids were talented but those are the results sometimes when you play freshmen a lot. They’re certainly getting good starting pitching and have a good bullpen. They’re hitting much better than they did last year and have some power numbers.”
State (15-15, 2-7 SEC) is currently experiencing some of those same offensive struggles the Rebels did a year ago. The Diamond Dogs have had four freshmen in the lineup most games and rank last in the league in batting average (.256), slugging (.356), on-base percentage (.347), runs (139), RBI (125), home runs (15) and total bases (278) and is also second to last in strikeouts (244).
“We’re young and there are some games where we’ve got five freshmen in the lineup,” said MSU center fielder Jake Mangum. “Experience wins, anyone would tell you that. We’ve just got to keep getting better and that’s all we can do.
“Our record is not where we want it to be right now in the SEC at all but we’ve still got seven series left.”
Mangum (.328) is the only player hitting above .300 on the Mississippi State roster. He also tops the club with 42 hits, 10 doubles, two triples, 20 runs scored and is 9 for 9 on steal attempts.
“We’ve been snake-bit this year,” Mangum said. “I know we haven’t done what we’ve needed to offensively but there are a lot of games where we’ve hit a lot of balls hard right at people. Hopefully those will start dropping.”
The Bulldogs have pitched it well and rank second in the conference in strikeouts with 296, three shy of Ole Miss.
Ole Miss heads to Starkville today having won three straight series to start SEC play.
The Rebels carry a 2.96 team earned run average into the MSU series, one of four SEC teams below 3.00.
