STARKVILLE — Mississippi State University baseball coach John Cohen knows his team will have to dominate on the mound for his team to win Southeastern Conference games.
The problem with that theory for now is the top-ranked pitching rotation in the league is traveling to Starkville for a three-game series.
The University of Arkansas enters the weekend series sporting a conference-leading 2.25 staff earned run average. The Razorbacks’ Saturday starter, sophomore righty Ryne Stanek, leads the Arkansas mound staff with the league’s fourth-best earned run average at 1.52 and 25 strikeouts.
“Arkansas was a little immature last year and still won the Western Division,” Cohen said. “Now they have a team that’s grown up a little bit.”
The key for what could be the critical game of the series is if MSU senior left-hander Nick Routt (1-2, 4.05) can finally figure out the secret to producing a quality outing against the Razorbacks.
In his last two starts against Arkansas, both of which occurred last year, Routt took the loss while giving up nine earned runs in 6 1/3 innings as the Razorbacks pounded out 16 hits in both games. Cohen said Thursday the plan hasn’t changed to pair Routt with sophomore right-hander Evan Mitchell as the first bullpen option for the Bulldogs.
“We just think those two guys combined can be a real advantage for us. We’re going to stick with that,” Cohen said. “I think Nick Routt at his best is very good. Our ballpark, which plays really big, I think that is advantageous also. Nick Routt is really helped by that just from the standpoint he gives up a few more fly balls than other pitchers on our staff.”
Dudy Noble Field is one of the largest ballparks in the SEC with large outfield gaps just under 380-feet to the wall in both left-center and right-center. Arkansas’ offensive style may be perfect for the pitch-to-contact approach with eight members of their everyday lineup hitting over .290 but not one player having more than six home runs.
“We’ve done it different ways,” Arkansas coach Dave Van Horn said. “We’ve taken our walks, that’s been huge for us. We’ve gotten some big hits. We’ve hit some sacrifice flies and bunted people around.
“If you walked in the locker room right now and asked the hitters, they’d tell you there’s a lot more in there. We can drive in a lot more runs and we will. But we are scoring runs in different ways and that’s a good thing.”
MSU’s pitching performance last weekend gives a young lineup confidence as they host Arkansas (20-2, 3-0 in SEC play) at Dudy Noble Field in a series which starts tonight at 6:30 p.m.
MSU will open the weekend with junior right-hander Chris Stratton (4-0, 4-0, 2.12) opposite Arkansas ace right-handed D.J. Baxendale (5-0, 2.30). Stratton was honored as the SEC Pitcher of the Week and tabbed for national pitcher or player of the week honors by Collegiate Baseball/Louisville Slugger, the NCBWA and College Baseball Insider, leads the SEC with 44 strikeouts. He allowed but one first-inning run and rang up an SEC season-best 17 strikeouts over 8.2 innings of mound work in his first start of the season on SEC opening night last Friday at No. 10 LSU.
MSU’s Sunday starter Kendall Graveman (2-0, 2.30) used his location and command to his advantage in the only Bulldogs win last week (a 7-1 victory at LSU) with 19 groundball outs while not recording a single strikeout.
“We have to keep rewarding that kind of performance because Kendall Graveman was special last weekend,” Cohen said. “He has a lot of sink on his pitches and dares you to try and lift it up in the air. When you can command like he does with that sink, then it’s really hard to get hit hard.”
Saturday’s game is set for a 2 p.m. start, while the Sunday finale is at noon on SportSouth.
Five players from the Arkansas baseball team were included by Baseball America on its top 50 prospects by class and its top 100 prospects for the 2012 Major League Baseball Draft. Three Razorback sophomores were included among the top 50 prospects in their class as Stanek was ranked third, Dominic Ficociello was 14th and Nolan Sanburn 17th.
Among the junior class, Matt Reynolds was rated as the 36th-best prospect, while DJ Baxendale was named the 38th-best prospect. Three Razorbacks were in Baseball America’s top 100 prospects for the 2012 MLB Draft. Sanburn, a draft-eligible sophomore, was ranked 43rd among this year’s draft prospects. Reynolds was ranked 83rd, while Baxendale was named the 85th-best prospect.
“We know we’re a good team,” Razorbacks sophomore outfielder Jacob Morris said. “We expect to win every time we go out. The SEC is the toughest league in the country and we’ll drop a game here or there. But we believe in our players and we want to get the job done.”
In a tight divisional race settled on the final weekend of the 2011 season, Mississippi State finished a game behind Arkansas in the SEC Western Division.
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