(Courtesy: Josh McCoy | Ole Miss Athletics)
Ryan Olenek celebrates with teammates after his game-tying 3 run home run in the bottom of the ninth inning against Auburn on Sunday. Ole Miss would go onto win the game with a walk off single by Henri Lartigue.
Ryan Olenek admittedly had not had his best day at the plate when he stepped into the box with two runners on and Ole Miss trailing 5-2 in the ninth inning.
“My previous at-bats throughout weren’t exactly great,” the freshman outfielder said. But it was his resiliency, coupled with a message Head Coach Mike Bianco that helped make his final at bat in the ninth the most important of the game.
“He said ‘I don’t know what’s gonna happen, but be ready for this pitch and put a good swing on it,” Olenek said. He did one better, and deposited Ben Braymer’s first pitch fastball into the crowd in left field for a game trying three run home run to tie the game at five.
“I knew was predominantly a fastball thrower, so I knew he was going to try to overpower me. So first pitch I was ready for it, and put a swing on it,” he said.
He took a hop, skip and a jump while rounding second base before stepping on home plate and into a powder-blue mob of guys that make up the most close-knit team the freshman has ever played with.
“It’s unbelievable. It’s pretty great,” he said, smiling. “This is the closest team that I’ve ever been on, so it’s really cool to win like this.”
Olenek’s shot to left field paved the way for the hottest hitter in the Ole Miss lineup to show off some resiliency of his own just four batters later in what would be the game’s final at bat. Henri Lartigue belted his ninth hit in 13 plate appearances on the weekend into the left-center gap, allowing Tate Blackman to coast home from second base, and gave the Rebels its 10th conference win and 31st of the year.
“He was throwing a lot of what was a split-change pitch. It was hard, but was diving hard at the end,” Lartigue said.
He laid off the first one that Gabe Klobosits offered before chasing a second one low for a strike.
“I laid off one, and I got in a fastball count and he threw me another one that I went after,” Lartigue said. “I just told myself you’ve gotta see it up. You can’t get beat down again, and that’s what I tried to do for the rest of the at bat.”
His patience paid off and he sent the Rebels home with a win in walk-off fashion, 6-5.
“When you sit back and look, what a tremendous year he’s had, and really, we’ve moved him all around the lineup,” Bianco said. “He shows up every day with a smile on his face, and has been a tremendous leader.”
Resiliency seemed to be the theme for Ole Miss on Sunday. They were resilient as a team, being able to finish off a sweep they really needed after falling behind 4-0 in the second inning in what was mostly a frustrating day. Ole Miss stranded nine and was not able to take advantage of five Auburn errors going into the inning, but when a sixth one allowed the game winning run in the form of Tate Blackman to reach, they seized the opportunity.
Olenek was resilient, and it even goes past his previous four unsuccessful at bats today. He’s an infielder by trade that did not see much action to begin the year, but was patient and turn his sparse opportunities into a starting role in the outfield. He’s been placed a lot of different places in the lineup, and most recently the two hole, and continues to adjust and produce.
“He’s such a gamer. He’s a kid that is not scared of the moment,” Bianco said. “You don’t worry about him. He’s a kid that plays so hard, and you need him where he may have a bad swing or a bad at bat, and he comes back in the next one, and certainly that’s about as big of an at bat that you can have.”
James McArthur, Sean Johnson’s successor, was resilient by throwing 4.2 innings of two-hit shutout baseball that kept Ole Miss in it in the middle innings. His resiliency also goes beyond today when you consider the fact that he did not make it out of the third inning in his first two starts.
“That’ll get lost in all of this, and really might be the biggest factor in why we won,” Bianco said of McArthur’s outing. “We’re not in a position, if we don’t pitch like that for the remaining seven plus innings.”
Or maybe it’s the fact he’s allowed one earned run in his last 23 innings, since those two starts and coming back from an off season foot injury. He’s lowered his era all the way down to 2.57, a far cry from where it sat in February.
“It’s time that he got a taste of this. It’s a different stage,” Bianco said of McArthur’s first SEC action. “He certainly looked like he was up to it today.”
It was that resiliency that flipped the script on a Sunday game that in the early innings, was following the same plot line of a lot of other series finales this team has had this year.
“We need one of those,” Bianco said of the win. “As I told the guys, we deserve this. We played well. We pitched well. We did what we needed to do to stay in the game.”
The third win of the weekend also made a difference in the standings. Ole Miss 31-10 (10-8) now sits two games above .500 in SEC play with 12 conference games remaining. It was the resiliency that this team has not had at times this year that keeps all of its hosting goals still in front of them.
“This is one of those games where it didn’t look like it was going to go our way,” Bianco said. “But we hung in there to the end and were able to put it together.”
