Good news and bad news have surrounded Mississippi State baseball as of late, and it has nothing to do with saving money on car insurance.
Take the past weekend for example.
Good news: The Bulldogs (14-8, 2-4 Southeastern Conference) paid a visit to the Louisiana State Tigers (20-4, 4-2), ranked No. 1 at the time in the Collegiate Baseball Division I poll, and handed them their fourth loss of the season on Friday night.
Bad news: MSU fell victim to an impressive Tiger hitting on Saturday (.371) and Sunday (.421) and left Baton Rouge with just the one victory. With only two wins in two SEC series, State is off to its worst conference start since 1998.
More good: State has gotten a tough portion of its SEC schedule out of the way (Tennessee and LSU).
More bad: Things won’t be easy this weekend when the Bulldogs host No. 5 Mississippi.
On Friday night, starting pitcher Jamie Gant and reliever Saunders Ramsey held LSU batters in check as the remaining Bulldogs used a four-run third inning to lead them to a 7-3 victory.
All seven runs came off Tiger starter Justin Meier, who received his first loss of the year.
“I think the LSU coaches were remarking that that was probably as well hit as Justin Meier has been hit in the last two years since he’s been at LSU,” MSU head coach Ron Polk said.
Neither Jeff Lacher nor Jon Crosby could do Saturday what Gant and Ramsey did the previous night-take a bit out of the Tiger offense. On the way to an 11-6 win, LSU put a four-spot on the fourth frame of the scoreboard, forcing the Bulldogs to replace Lacher with Crosby, who gave up another four runs the next inning.
“Jeff got a couple of pitches up, and this is a great hitting ball club,” Polk said.
The weather was a factor, though, as a strong wind helped anything hit to left field leave the yard. LSU hit three home runs.
“The ballpark played a little short,” Polk briefly acknowledged.
The wind and the LSU batting made for a similar story in Sunday’s rubber match as the Tigers triumphed over the Bulldogs 14-3. This time, Tiger hitters tacked on to Alan Johnson’s ERA by putting up a seven-spot in the third inning.
“AJ (Johnson) needed a little luck,” Polk said. “And we didn’t get any luck.”
Now that the weekend is over, the good news and bad news starts again today.
Good news: the Diamond Dawgs have returned home for a five-game stand that will include two midweek games, giving State an opportunity to get back on track before a three-game series with the Rebels.
Bad news: another Birmingham team (Alabama-Birminham) and another Louisiana team (Louisiana-Monroe) will be making the trip to Starkville.
UAB will attempt to follow the lead set by Samford and Birmingham-Southern, who handily defeated MSU on Tuesday and Wednesday of last week.
Eric Ebers, the starter last Tuesday against Birmingham-Southern, will start against the Blazers. Ebers says the poor defensive performance he had to work with last week shouldn’t happen very often. In that game, Ebers got little help in the third inning when he allowed five runs.
“A fluke inning like that was just ridiculous,” he said. “It was just one of those days. If you make one mistake, you get nervous because you don’t want to make another one.”
Despite the team losing six out of its last eight, Ebers says the Bulldogs are just starting to come around. “We’re going to get hot soon,” he said. “We still believe we’re a good ball club. I mean, we haven’t gotten a lot of help from the media.”
If the ball club does get hot, the writers should warm up a little as well.