It would be difficult to overstate the importance of this weekend’s series between No. 11 Ole Miss and No. 13 LSU at Swayze Field.
This late-April SEC series features two teams that are teetering on the cusp of hosting a regional or having to go elsewhere come June. D1 Baseball’s latest projections had LSU as a host and Ole Miss as a two-seed, while Baseball America had Ole Miss hosting and the Tigers at a two-seed.
To put it simply: Both teams really need this series.
Junior Colby Bortles safely slides into home plate after a hit from Junior J.B. Woodman during the game against Murray State. Photo by Evan Tuner
On the Mound
Thursday night will feature a pair of junior starters in Ole Miss’ Brady Bramlett and LSU’s Jared Poche. The two have had similar years to this point in the sense that they have been good on Friday nights for their respective teams, but not in that dominant echelon where a couple of SEC Friday night starters are.
Poche is 5-4 with a 3.26 ERA in ten starts this season. The left-hander was roughed up a bit by a potent Mississippi State lineup in his last start, and took the loss after allowing seven runs on eight hits in six innings pitched. Mississippi State opened the game with a four-spot in the first before adding three more in the sixth, an inning that ran Poche out of the game.
Bramlett went head-to-head with Auburn’s Cole Lipscomb in his last outing and got the win by yielding just two runs on six hits, also throwing six innings. Other than being touched up for a two-run home run in the sixth from Niko Buentello, Bramlett was pretty dominant on the night.
Alex Lange will take the mound for LSU on Saturday. The sophomore right-hander took the SEC by storm last year. Lange posted a 12-0 record in 2015 and was dominant in his first outing in the Southeastern Conference. His 1.14 ERA helped him earn first team All-American honors as well as national freshman pitcher of the year. This year, however, has been a little bit of a different story for Lange. He’s struggled with his command and boasts a 4-2 record and 4.34 ERA to this point. Lange has shown his dominance at times this year, and had a complete game spoiled in a 2-1 loss to Mississippi State last week, but has not been as consistent as he was in 2015. When Lange is firing on all cylinders, he has some of the most overpowering stuff in college baseball.
David Parkinson probably didn’t imagine he’d be starting in the swing game in a late-April series to begin this year, but here we are. The sophomore left-hander was moved into this role three weeks ago against Arkansas after the Rebel rotation struggled mightily to begin SEC play and has pitched well. He is 2-1 in the games he has started and has done just what Mike Bianco asked him to do, and that is give Ole Miss a chance to win.
The finale has a freshman making his first career SEC start in Ole Miss’ James McArthur and LSU senior John Valek III. Since Ole Miss headed up to Knoxville to begin the SEC season, it has not been able to solidify the back end of its rotation. McArthur got off to a slow start to begin the year, which likely stemmed from a foot injury he suffered in the fall, but has rebounded since. A guy that didn’t make it out of the third inning in his first two starts, he has lowered his ERA to 2.84 and has allowed one earned run in his last 28 innings. Bianco pitched him in relief last Sunday against Auburn and said after, “It was time for him to get a taste of this.” The freshman will get a full dose on Saturday.
Valek is 6-1. He has been as solid of a Sunday starter that you could ask for in the SEC and has saved LSU from being swept a couple of times this year. Valek came to LSU by way of Akron, which discontinued its baseball program, and has been a difference maker, as well as making LSU tough to beat in series finales
OFFENSE
LSU ranks fourth in team batting in the conference while Ole Miss is 12th, with the equalizer being that both lineups have struggled against good pitching. Ole Miss is hitting .274 as a team this year and LSU is hitting exactly .300. LSU runs a lot. In fact, they lead the SEC in stolen base attempts with 94, and were successful on 69 of them. By comparison. Ole Miss has only attempted 47 steals this year, 28 of them successful.
Antoine Duplantis is hitting .358 for LSU and Beau Jordan leads the team in RBIs with 35. LSU has 29 team home runs to Ole Miss’ 27.
Henri Lartigue has been on a tear for the Rebels in recent weeks. He had a 9-13 weekend against Auburn last weekend, including the walk off hit in the left-center gap on Sunday that helped Ole Miss complete it’s sweep. He is hitting .423 in SEC play with 30 hits. He leads Ole Miss in both of those categories. By a lot.
Analysis
Again, this is a huge series for both of these teams for both SEC records and hosting purposes. Ole Miss really needs to add more quality wins to its resume, and the knock on this team all year has been the inability to hit against good pitching. It’ll get its chance all three days against LSU. The Rebels in general have pitched a little better than LSU have, and the Tigers have hit more consistently than Ole Miss. These will be three close games where the margin of error will be thin. Ole Miss takes two because it’s at home and I believe James McArthur will be a difference maker in a rotation that he might have been in all along if it were not for his injury.
