The stats speak for themselves.
Alabama swept Ole Miss over the weekend, capping off an 0-4 week for the Rebels and dropping them to 19-12 overall and 4-8 in the SEC. That No. 1 ranking was flawed at the time and feels like light years ago right now. Ole Miss is 4-8 in the league for the first time since 2013 and was swept twice in a row at home for the first time since 1997 when Alabama and Mississippi did it back-to-back at Swayze.
The truth is that Ole Miss isn’t playing good enough baseball in any facet at the moment, struggling to hit, pitch or field, and that’s a recipe for disaster in the SEC, even in this odd year when the league is all smushed in a big glob mostly behind Tennessee which is 12-0 in the SEC, the first team to ever do that.
The following is about the weekend and the season more than this one game. I’ll have some other things this week on what’s happened and where things stand and where things go from here, but for now here are my stream of consciousness thoughts with some stats added in.
Mike Bianco said the following about what he told his team after the game. On Friday, he seemed to get on them a little bit, as you couldn’t make out the words but could tell he raised his voice in the huddle. On Saturday he told them to stick together and play with energy.
"The two things that I said to them was number one, you have to compete like the last two days. It wasn't that we didn't compete, we just didn't play well enough to win. We have to play with that kind of energy and that kind of heart every single day because that's the one thing that can control. The other part of it is that you have to play well enough in this league… They’re all good enough to beat you if you don't play well. When you get in the kind of funk we have, when you don't play well and put it all together in all three phases, you lose baseball games, especially if the other team plays well. Credit Alabama, but at the end of the day, we're just not playing well enough. Yesterday, we swung it well enough to win. Today, we just didn't do well enough in either phase. Defensively, big play by McCants to get us out of the first inning. But the truth us, offensively and on the mound, just wasn't enough to win an SEC game today.”
It was coach speak in a lot of ways, but it’s also the truth, and that’s a startling situation for Ole Miss at the moment. It’s just not good enough. Here’s the key things I’m thinking about each area of the team right now.
Pitching: I’m not sure Ole Miss has a player I trust to get through the batting order a second time, and essentially the lack of a starting pitcher makes for a ridiculously difficult path to pitching through a weekend. Bianco called Derek Diamond’s outing terrific today, and he was great the first time through, but after sitting down the first nine batters he faced, two of the next five hit home runs. I do think Diamond has a role, but right now there’s no evidence he needs to go through the order a second time.
I’ll have more on this early in the week, but Bianco’s program is built off high-end starting pitching. It always has been, and typically he rides power-arm starters for multiple seasons and gets good value out of his top juniors. But right now that class is providing very little, and it is a root cause for where things stand. Diamond and Drew McDaniel were expected to be headliners in year three, and neither has been able to occupy a consistent role. The failure in that in that class has a trickle-down effect that the other classes can’t or haven’t made up. Starting pitching is just throwing darts right now, and there’s no answer that seems clear. I thought Hunter Elliott, I will say, has been better the last two weeks than Bianco thought in his quotes about him. The pitching issues are recruiting and development and a little bad luck — mostly the first and second of those.
Hitting: Ole Miss hit nine home runs on the weekend and got swept. It’s just a crazy stat. The Rebels’ approach is bad right now, as it’s so home-run dependent and it doesn’t work counts or provide quality at-bats. The Rebels scored just 17 runs on the weekend despite those nine home runs. So few runs are manufactured on balls inside the yard.
Brian Rippee alerted me to this stat, and I crosschecked it: Ole Miss’ offense outside of Tim Elko and Jacob Gonzalez went 13-for-80 (.162) with five total RBIs this weekend. And only one of those five came on something other than a home run. Ole Miss isn’t going to snap out of it until it moves the baseball and hits the ball the other way and up the middle. It’s about to see a ton of pitching backwards and lefties spinning stuff on the outside part of the plate.
It’s the same lineup as last year, so what’s different? That’s the question, and we won’t solve all of it in this content item, but I will say that the lack of pitching is having an impact, in my opinion. When you had Doug Nikhazy, you knew you were going to win on night one. That led to confidence and patience. And then you’re up in the series and you’re loose and for a while there it was Gunnar Hoglund. And there’s a complementary nature to the way the offense and pitching coexist. But there’s no time to settle in here. I think the offense tries to hit the six-run home run immediately, and they won’t admit this even if it’s true, but the way Ole Miss has allowed runs and no gotten though the lineup sends a message that’s causing some of this mess. However, that’s not an excuse, and there’s a regression with the offense — in productivity and approach and a lack of progression for some of the guys who do need to step up and improve.
In SEC play, Ole Miss is hitting .234 with a .309 on-base percentage, 139 strikeouts and 41 walks. The stats are just awful, and whether it’s pressing or mindset, it seems to be approach-related. That's not to be blamed on pitching. It's a lack of production and some smoke and mirrors from last season when looking back.
Defense: Empty runs are scoring because of bad defense. Reagan Burford has really struggled at third base, and the outfield is full of converted infielders who are ok most of the time but don’t have seem to work that well together. Justin Bench is an excellent defender everywhere, but Kevin Graham seems to be getting comfortable still after his injury and TJ McCants a middle infielder still learning to play outfield. It’s clear it’s not his natural position. Jacob. Gonzalez only has one error in league play, and he’s been better than the start of the season at short, and Hayden Dunhurst was cleaner this weekend. But there’s little margin for error because of the other areas of the team, and Ole Miss has been relatively bad defensively for much of the season.
Intangibles: I thought Ole Miss fought back and played hard the last two days, but just weren’t good enough. Which is its own problem, but it wasn’t a deal where the Rebels lay down. But body language has been an issue at times during this poor streak, and I don’t know who the vocal leaders are to stir things up. There’s a lot of lead by example, but on past teams there would be one or two guys to get attention and snap the rest of the team out of the malaise. I’m not saying it doesn’t exist here, as I’m obviously not in the clubhouse, but I can’t identify an obvious option for who has that role.
Kemp Alderman said this today:
“We got away from ourselves. We’re not used to losing. We’ve been playing good, not really in all aspects of the game. Yesterday, we hit but didn’t throw good enough. Today we came up a bit short. I think it’s good for us to get a little adversity under our belts. I have faith in this team. We have a lot of older guys, mature guys. We’ll bounce back and be ourselves. We’re just going through a little struggle right now. We’ll be back.
“It’s baseball. Baseball is a tough game. Lot of the fans don’t see it and a lot of the people don’t know, but baseball is tough. We’re playing in the Southeastern Conference, the best conference in college baseball. Any team can beat any team on any given day. In this conference, you can’t mess up. You have to be your best.”
I’m not picking on Alderman here. He’s just answering a question from the media about the message from Bianco and what he thinks is wrong. But overall there seems to be this waiting for things to get better without really changing much. All the games are starting to look the same. I don’ know if it’s a lack of confidence or lack of urgency or what, but I feel like I’m watching Groundhog Day to an extent.
As I wrote earlier, 2013 is the only time Ole Miss has ever been 4-8 in the SEC before now under Bianco. That group, which had Bobby Wahl and Mike Mayers, as well as a lot of the offensive nucleus of the 2014 Omaha team, swept Alabama the following week and got back to 15-15 in the SEC at the end of the year. It wasn’t a good team, and its struggled, going 1-2 in Raleigh, but it showed some toughness during the season. This team doesn’t have a Wahl to rely on, and every part of it has to be better. It’s a personnel issue far more than it was that season. That limits the options because, back to the original thought up top, any deficiencies happened in recruiting and development. And traditional recruiting, not the transfer portal. Whatever John Gaddis and Jack Washburn are or aren’t, that’s not the issue. It’s the high school recruiting. The way Ole Miss is built, it’s not going to have a lot of scholarship money for the portal. That’s not the path unless it’s players paying their own ways.
Ole Miss goes to South Carolina this weekend and then has a Double Decker-Grove Bowl weekend with Mississippi State. The expectations have changed. Right now, it’s just about getting into the NCAA Tournament under the obvious backdrop of program decisions on the horizon based on how the group finishes. It’s not an enviable position.
This isn’t one of the more talented rosters I’ve covered, but it’s better than it’s currently showing. It’s certainly not bad enough to be in position to miss the postseason. But that’s where it currently sits, and it’s now or never to clean it up and recalibrate while the macro situation of the program lingers overhead.
Alabama swept Ole Miss over the weekend, capping off an 0-4 week for the Rebels and dropping them to 19-12 overall and 4-8 in the SEC. That No. 1 ranking was flawed at the time and feels like light years ago right now. Ole Miss is 4-8 in the league for the first time since 2013 and was swept twice in a row at home for the first time since 1997 when Alabama and Mississippi did it back-to-back at Swayze.
The truth is that Ole Miss isn’t playing good enough baseball in any facet at the moment, struggling to hit, pitch or field, and that’s a recipe for disaster in the SEC, even in this odd year when the league is all smushed in a big glob mostly behind Tennessee which is 12-0 in the SEC, the first team to ever do that.
The following is about the weekend and the season more than this one game. I’ll have some other things this week on what’s happened and where things stand and where things go from here, but for now here are my stream of consciousness thoughts with some stats added in.
Mike Bianco said the following about what he told his team after the game. On Friday, he seemed to get on them a little bit, as you couldn’t make out the words but could tell he raised his voice in the huddle. On Saturday he told them to stick together and play with energy.
"The two things that I said to them was number one, you have to compete like the last two days. It wasn't that we didn't compete, we just didn't play well enough to win. We have to play with that kind of energy and that kind of heart every single day because that's the one thing that can control. The other part of it is that you have to play well enough in this league… They’re all good enough to beat you if you don't play well. When you get in the kind of funk we have, when you don't play well and put it all together in all three phases, you lose baseball games, especially if the other team plays well. Credit Alabama, but at the end of the day, we're just not playing well enough. Yesterday, we swung it well enough to win. Today, we just didn't do well enough in either phase. Defensively, big play by McCants to get us out of the first inning. But the truth us, offensively and on the mound, just wasn't enough to win an SEC game today.”
It was coach speak in a lot of ways, but it’s also the truth, and that’s a startling situation for Ole Miss at the moment. It’s just not good enough. Here’s the key things I’m thinking about each area of the team right now.
Pitching: I’m not sure Ole Miss has a player I trust to get through the batting order a second time, and essentially the lack of a starting pitcher makes for a ridiculously difficult path to pitching through a weekend. Bianco called Derek Diamond’s outing terrific today, and he was great the first time through, but after sitting down the first nine batters he faced, two of the next five hit home runs. I do think Diamond has a role, but right now there’s no evidence he needs to go through the order a second time.
I’ll have more on this early in the week, but Bianco’s program is built off high-end starting pitching. It always has been, and typically he rides power-arm starters for multiple seasons and gets good value out of his top juniors. But right now that class is providing very little, and it is a root cause for where things stand. Diamond and Drew McDaniel were expected to be headliners in year three, and neither has been able to occupy a consistent role. The failure in that in that class has a trickle-down effect that the other classes can’t or haven’t made up. Starting pitching is just throwing darts right now, and there’s no answer that seems clear. I thought Hunter Elliott, I will say, has been better the last two weeks than Bianco thought in his quotes about him. The pitching issues are recruiting and development and a little bad luck — mostly the first and second of those.
Hitting: Ole Miss hit nine home runs on the weekend and got swept. It’s just a crazy stat. The Rebels’ approach is bad right now, as it’s so home-run dependent and it doesn’t work counts or provide quality at-bats. The Rebels scored just 17 runs on the weekend despite those nine home runs. So few runs are manufactured on balls inside the yard.
Brian Rippee alerted me to this stat, and I crosschecked it: Ole Miss’ offense outside of Tim Elko and Jacob Gonzalez went 13-for-80 (.162) with five total RBIs this weekend. And only one of those five came on something other than a home run. Ole Miss isn’t going to snap out of it until it moves the baseball and hits the ball the other way and up the middle. It’s about to see a ton of pitching backwards and lefties spinning stuff on the outside part of the plate.
It’s the same lineup as last year, so what’s different? That’s the question, and we won’t solve all of it in this content item, but I will say that the lack of pitching is having an impact, in my opinion. When you had Doug Nikhazy, you knew you were going to win on night one. That led to confidence and patience. And then you’re up in the series and you’re loose and for a while there it was Gunnar Hoglund. And there’s a complementary nature to the way the offense and pitching coexist. But there’s no time to settle in here. I think the offense tries to hit the six-run home run immediately, and they won’t admit this even if it’s true, but the way Ole Miss has allowed runs and no gotten though the lineup sends a message that’s causing some of this mess. However, that’s not an excuse, and there’s a regression with the offense — in productivity and approach and a lack of progression for some of the guys who do need to step up and improve.
In SEC play, Ole Miss is hitting .234 with a .309 on-base percentage, 139 strikeouts and 41 walks. The stats are just awful, and whether it’s pressing or mindset, it seems to be approach-related. That's not to be blamed on pitching. It's a lack of production and some smoke and mirrors from last season when looking back.
Defense: Empty runs are scoring because of bad defense. Reagan Burford has really struggled at third base, and the outfield is full of converted infielders who are ok most of the time but don’t have seem to work that well together. Justin Bench is an excellent defender everywhere, but Kevin Graham seems to be getting comfortable still after his injury and TJ McCants a middle infielder still learning to play outfield. It’s clear it’s not his natural position. Jacob. Gonzalez only has one error in league play, and he’s been better than the start of the season at short, and Hayden Dunhurst was cleaner this weekend. But there’s little margin for error because of the other areas of the team, and Ole Miss has been relatively bad defensively for much of the season.
Intangibles: I thought Ole Miss fought back and played hard the last two days, but just weren’t good enough. Which is its own problem, but it wasn’t a deal where the Rebels lay down. But body language has been an issue at times during this poor streak, and I don’t know who the vocal leaders are to stir things up. There’s a lot of lead by example, but on past teams there would be one or two guys to get attention and snap the rest of the team out of the malaise. I’m not saying it doesn’t exist here, as I’m obviously not in the clubhouse, but I can’t identify an obvious option for who has that role.
Kemp Alderman said this today:
“We got away from ourselves. We’re not used to losing. We’ve been playing good, not really in all aspects of the game. Yesterday, we hit but didn’t throw good enough. Today we came up a bit short. I think it’s good for us to get a little adversity under our belts. I have faith in this team. We have a lot of older guys, mature guys. We’ll bounce back and be ourselves. We’re just going through a little struggle right now. We’ll be back.
“It’s baseball. Baseball is a tough game. Lot of the fans don’t see it and a lot of the people don’t know, but baseball is tough. We’re playing in the Southeastern Conference, the best conference in college baseball. Any team can beat any team on any given day. In this conference, you can’t mess up. You have to be your best.”
I’m not picking on Alderman here. He’s just answering a question from the media about the message from Bianco and what he thinks is wrong. But overall there seems to be this waiting for things to get better without really changing much. All the games are starting to look the same. I don’ know if it’s a lack of confidence or lack of urgency or what, but I feel like I’m watching Groundhog Day to an extent.
As I wrote earlier, 2013 is the only time Ole Miss has ever been 4-8 in the SEC before now under Bianco. That group, which had Bobby Wahl and Mike Mayers, as well as a lot of the offensive nucleus of the 2014 Omaha team, swept Alabama the following week and got back to 15-15 in the SEC at the end of the year. It wasn’t a good team, and its struggled, going 1-2 in Raleigh, but it showed some toughness during the season. This team doesn’t have a Wahl to rely on, and every part of it has to be better. It’s a personnel issue far more than it was that season. That limits the options because, back to the original thought up top, any deficiencies happened in recruiting and development. And traditional recruiting, not the transfer portal. Whatever John Gaddis and Jack Washburn are or aren’t, that’s not the issue. It’s the high school recruiting. The way Ole Miss is built, it’s not going to have a lot of scholarship money for the portal. That’s not the path unless it’s players paying their own ways.
Ole Miss goes to South Carolina this weekend and then has a Double Decker-Grove Bowl weekend with Mississippi State. The expectations have changed. Right now, it’s just about getting into the NCAA Tournament under the obvious backdrop of program decisions on the horizon based on how the group finishes. It’s not an enviable position.
This isn’t one of the more talented rosters I’ve covered, but it’s better than it’s currently showing. It’s certainly not bad enough to be in position to miss the postseason. But that’s where it currently sits, and it’s now or never to clean it up and recalibrate while the macro situation of the program lingers overhead.
