HOOVER, Alabama — Arkansas baseball coach Dave Van Horn saw the looming danger of Brent Rooker coming from innings away.
“We knew a couple of innings earlier we had to go three up, three down in the eighth and three up, three down in the ninth so we wouldn’t have to get to him,” he said.
Ryan Gridley’s leadoff single just made the regrettable situation even worse. It brought Rooker to the plate with no outs and the tying run on first base.
Rooker delivered, hitting an RBI double that scored Gridley and tied the game. After moving to third on a bunt single and a hit batsman, Rooker went on to score the go-ahead run on Cody Brown’s bases-loaded walk.
It was the decisive run as MSU (36-22) completed the comeback victory in the second round of the Southeastern Conference Tournament, beating Georgia (39-16) 4-3. No. 18 MSU, as the 5 seed, will face top-seeded and No. 4 Florida at 11 a.m. Friday with the winner going to the semifinals.
Rooker went into his pivotal at-bat against Cannon Chadwick with a plan crafted weeks ago.
“I didn’t think they were going to throw me any fastballs for a strike, so I thought I’d sit on breaking balls the whole at-bat,” Rooker said.
Rooker told MSU coach Andy Cannizaro the same thing before the at-bat. Looking back on the conversation, Cannizaro said, “He didn’t say, ‘I’m going to sit on it and hit it off the wall.’ His thoughts are so mature. He just going to sit on it, put a good swing on it and see what happens. He did and he bangs it into the gap. He’s worth the price of admission.”
Lineup shuffle
The last time MSU had someone other than Cody Brown in the cleanup spot was April 11, a full 22 games ago as of Thursday. That streak broke when Cannizaro elected to move second baseman Hunter Stovall, batting fifth in Tuesday’s win, up to fourth and replacing him with Brown.
Brown entered the game in a slump, collecting two hits in his last 21 at-bats (.095) against SEC competition, but Cannizaro viewed the move as one more based on Stovall’s recent performance.
“Obviously Stovall gives us a tremendous at-bat every day and he has such a short, compact swing,” Cannizaro said. “In the 3- and 4-hole, you can tell by our lineup I don’t necessarily view the guy in the 3- and 4-hole as the guy that needs to drive the ball out of the ball park. Here we are with 36 wins, winning in the SEC Tournament with our 3- and 4-hole guy having one home run combined. We’re looking for quality, competitive at-bats to hit the most times in a game.”
Gordon back at the plate
The peculiar redshirt sophomore season that has been for Cole Gordon took another turn Thursday.
Gordon entered the season in the conversation for the team’s opening at first base; by April he was doing more pitching than he was hitting, even starting on the mound five times in April, four of them against SEC teams.
In the eighth inning, Gordon stepped to the plate with the tying run on third base. It was Gordon’s first at-bat since May 13, searching for his first hit since March 30.
“(Arkansas pitcher Kevin Kopps) was a big-time cutter, slider guy and we pinch-hit for Tanner Poole at the time, and Poole has struggled against some of those hard cutter, slider guys at times,” Cannizaro said. “We thought as a staff (the movement of those pitches) were going to run into Cole as opposed to running away from Tanner.”
Gordon bounced into a double play to end the inning, but if given the opportunity, Cannizaro said he would do it again.
A negative trend
For the second day in a row, MSU left multiple opportunities for runs untaken, stranding 12 runners on base and hitting .167 (3-18) with runners in scoring position.
The last two days have been no anomaly: MSU has struggled with runners on for a couple of weeks now.
MSU has stranded at least seven runners in each of its last eight games, starting with the second game of the Georgia series. In the 50 games before that, MSU only did so in 60 percent of its games with the longest streak lasting five games. It came at the beginning of the year from MSU’s third to seventh games of the season, Feb. 19 to 25.
Follow Dispatch sports writer Brett Hudson on Twitter, @Brett_Hudson
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