MEMPHIS, Tenn. – The Mississippi State baseball team dialed long distance Tuesday to knock off Memphis 8-3 at AutoZone Park in its final non-conference game of the regular season.
The Bulldogs used a solo home run from Jarrod Parks and a two-run home run from Nick Vickerson to break open a tight game. Vickerson”s sixth-inning blast helped the Bulldogs build on a 4-3 lead.
With the victory, MSU improves to 33-19, and 9-1 this month. The Bulldogs finish the non-conference campaign with a 20-5 mark. It was also MSU”s 21st errorless game of the season.
Memphis drops to 27-24.
“We played solid defense tonight,” MSU coach John Cohen said. “We would have liked to put some more runs on the board early. However, we kept battling and eventually came up with some timely hits. This was a real big road win for us. It helps us get ready for a critical weekend.”
Evan Mitchell (5-1) sparkled in his longest relief stint of the season. He struck out 11 and allowed four hits and no runs in 4 1/3 innings. The 11 strikeouts was the second highest strikeout total for an MSU pitcher this year.
“I just wanted to come in and throw strikes,” Mitchell said. “Coming with runners on base, I just wanted to get that out. After getting that first out, it was a matter of throwing strikes as I could. The game went my way with the strikeouts.”
Kendall Graveman also pitched well. He was staked to a 4-0 lead, but he left with a 4-3 lead and two outs in the fifth – falling one out shy of being eligible for a decision.
“Kendall was really solid for us,” Cohen said. “He did what we wanted him to do. Evan had a great, great night. He had good velocity and movement on his fastball.”
The Bulldogs built struck first with three runs in the second. A pair of walks to Brent Brownlee and Jonathan Ogden started the big inning. Wes Thigpen followed with an RBI single. C.T. Bradford followed with an RBI double. A wild pitch scored Thigpen.
The lead grew to 4-0 on Parks” home run, his third, that reached the grass hill beyond the left-field wall.
Memphis scored in the home half of the fourth and chased Graveman with a run-scoring double by Chad Zurcher and a run-scoring single by T.J. Rich an inning later.
From there, Mitchell had things on cruise control as he faced 18 batters and threw 69 pitches.
Vickerson hit his fifth home run of the season in the sixth. The Bulldogs added insurance scores in the seventh and ninth.
Thigpen had three hits, while Parks reached base five times, including drawing four of his team”s 11 walks.
MSU will close Southeastern Conference play this weekend when it plays host to LSU at Dudy Noble Field. Game times are 6 p.m. Thursday (CSS), 6:30 p.m. Friday, and 2 p.m. Saturday.
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