Run production and offense have come and gone like the common cold for Ole Miss in this young 2017 season. The Rebels came out of the gate sprinting with back-to-back sweeps over ranked opponents East Carolina and UNC-Wilmington, a stretch in which the team pile up 55 runs in its first seven games. The freshman bats caught fire immediately and began on a trajectory that now seems like the polar opposite of what most thought would happen, one that has since come back down to earth a little.
The Rebels were humbled by some of the most elite pitching in college baseball in a round robin tournament in Houston and then relied on their pitching to carry the load for the next seven games after that, winning wars of attrition in low-scoring games such as a 1-0 and 2-0 affairs against Furman and a 1-0 Friday night win against Vanderbilt. The pitching staff had a stretch of five games in which the opponent didn’t touch home plate.
Catcher Cooper Johnson (left), head coach Mike Bianco (middle) and pitcher Ryan Rolison (right) talk on the mound during Ole Miss’ game against Texas Tech Saturday, March 4, at Minute Maid Park in Houston. Texas Tech would go on to defeat Ole Miss 5-1. (Photo by: Cameron Brooks)
There were some bright spots offensively during this stretch – like a 10-run explosion last Sunday to clinch a series win over the Commodores – and guys were squaring balls up at times, just with little to show for it. But the offense just seemingly hasn’t been there over the last 10 games for Ole Miss.
“We keep track of “quabs” (quality at bats), and it seemed like each game we would have 20-25 quabs and just be hitting balls right at people,” freshman Thomas Dillard said. “It seemed like 1-9 in our lineup, we were having good at-bats. It just wasn’t working out for us.”
Some of it is a natural byproduct of having four, and sometimes five, freshman bats in the lineup. Cooper Johnson and Grae Kessinger have 13 hits on the year combined between the two, and neither one was expected to carry a heavy offensive load this year. They’re in the lineup because of their defense. But it can be difficult to compensate for that when the other seven slots in the lineup aren’t overly powerful. Colby Bortles got off to a treacherous start in the first two weekends and yet is the only player on the team with double-digit RBIs. Will Golsan is the only player on the team hitting .300 right now and is one of three players with 20 hits through 21 games.
“I think it’s part of it. We got off to a great start and played really well the first two weeks,” head coach Mike Bianco said. “Another part of it is that we played really poorly offensively for a couple of weeks. Really delving into it, part of the pressure on some of these younger guys is that no one else was hitting, and so it was kind of like that virus caught everybody. I think a lot of people stopped looking the same. The swings, the confidence started to waver. But I thought this past weekend we swung it better, and some of the guys that we’re talking about had better swings, even if they didn’t have the results. I thought some of the guys that didn’t have hits had some hard outs.”
Tuesday’s loss to Memphis was a pretty good picture of what Bianco was alluding to. Ole Miss caught Memphis’ midweek starter Jonathan Bowlan on one of the best nights of his career and squared up some baseballs that were really hard outs. But obviously that didn’t translate to the box score.
Ole Miss will certainly need that offense to come back as it hits the road in SEC play for the first time on Thursday against a Kentucky team that swept Texas A&M on the road last weekend. The Wildcats have a couple of tall, athletic arms with a lot of velocity, and it will certainly be a tough test for this young lineup. Baseball can be a funny game. Offense for any team comes and goes in spurts, but if for nothing else but the psyche and confidence of this young group, the Rebels need to see some balls miss gloves and runs cross the plate in bunches this weekend.
