Brandon Wright is the sports editor of The Reflector. He can be reached at [email protected].For anyone who hasn’t been paying attention, State’s baseball team hasn’t been doing too well. Actually, that’s a massive understatement. So far, this is the worst season in my memory, and probably the worst season since well before my lifetime began.
We, and yes, I say we because I am a lifelong Bulldog fan, are 15-21 and 3-12 in SEC play. That’s worse than bad. That’s unfathomably bad. We are currently last in the SEC and, get this, 2.5 games out of 11th. The once mighty Mississippi State baseball Bulldogs are the whipping boys of the conference.
Why have the Diamond Dogs underperformed so? All of State’s woes can be summed up in two words: youth and injuries.
Any avid MSU baseball fan knows youth is one of Ron Polk’s favorite reasons to cite when his team isn’t performing at the high level that MSU fans have rightly come to expect. I’m not calling it an excuse, because most years — this one included — it’s a valid point. After all, this team had to replace quite a few key players from a pretty good club a year ago.
Let’s take a look: Easley, Moreland, Rea, LaNinfa, McCaskill. For non-followers of MSU baseball, suffice it to say that these are everyday starters that were responsible for a lot of at-bats a year ago.
I could mention things like Jeffrey Rea being MSU’s all-time career hits leader, or Easley being selected as an All-American, or Mitch Moreland also serving as the closer for most of the year, but I won’t. In short, there was a lot of rebuilding to do in our lineup.
Strangely enough, hitting has not been our problem for the most part this year. It’s trailed off some from last year, but we’re batting just under .300 as a team, which isn’t awful. We’re averaging over six runs a game, which isn’t bad either. Six runs should be enough to win most games.
That brings me to the other reason I mentioned, which is injury. Injuries are a part of all sports, including baseball. Teams have injuries every year and they have to fight through them. With that said, we have had a great deal of injuries to key players this year.
Coming in, if there were three players could have given injury immunity to, there’s a good chance their names would have been Aaron Weatherford, Justin Pigott, and Brandon Turner. And? You guessed it. Those three names have been on the injury report for a large part of the season.
Who are these guys? Well, Pigott led the team a year ago in innings pitched and strikeouts, while Weatherford was third in innings pitched and second in strikeouts. Oh, and Brandon Turner? He just led the conference in batting average as a freshman and was named an All-American. Nothing special. Really, we can afford to lose guys like that.
That’s not to say we haven’t had other injuries either. Chad Crosswhite suffered an injury, and he led the team in wins a year ago. Cody Freeman’s been injured, and he’s the team’s current batting average leader with a healthy .394. There have been others, too. Only two men have started every game: Russ Sneed and Tyler Moore.
Even with youth and injury, last place in the conference is unacceptable. I’m apparently not the only fan that thinks so either. For last weekend’s Vanderbilt series, a total of 5,318 fans came through the gates in three games. For comparison, our average attendance per game in 2007 was 6,795.
It sure would be a shame for Polk’s last year (maybe) to be his only losing season, but unless something changes quick, that’s what we’re headed for.
There are, in fact, reasons to hope that we can salvage a winning season, but it won’t be easy. There are only 20 games left and to break even overall we need to win at least 13 of them.
However, we’re starting to get healthy. Pigott makes his triumphant return this weekend, Weatherford got his first win this week and Cody Freeman should play at least some this weekend.
In addition to getting some key guys back, we also benefit from a break in scheduling. The last five SEC opponents we’ve faced are all currently in Baseball America’s Top 25. The next five? Not one. Only one has a winning conference record. Even though we’re in last, we’re only three games out of eighth.That’s the cutoff for making the SEC Tournament. That, as sad as it sounds, is now my barometer for this season’s success. If we can do that, I can be pleased. If not, well … that’s why there’s a next year.