STARKVILLE — With Ross Highfill still working his way back from a broken nose he sustained last Friday night at Oklahoma, Joe Powell is getting the chance to be the everyday catcher for Mississippi State.
In his second year as a Bulldog, Powell is not playing as much as he did last year with Highfill back in the fold. But now that he’s getting more consistent at-bats, he is starting to look more comfortable at the plate. And he had the biggest at-bat of the game Tuesday night against Samford, stepping into the box with the bases loaded and two outs in the fourth inning of a tie game.
Powell quickly fell behind 0-2 in the count before fighting off a few pitches and taking a couple out of the zone. On the eighth pitch of the sequence, he lined a two-run single to right field off Samford starter Brooks Rice, giving MSU the lead for good in a 6-1 victory.
“The more pitches I see, the more at-bats I’m getting, the more comfortable I feel (and) the more settled in I am,” Powell said. “The longer the at-bat went on, I was just seeing it better. I was really comfortable with the strike zone and I knew what (Rice) had, so I knew he had nothing to beat me with in that at-bat. Just put my best foot forward there and did what I could to put our team in a position to win.”
Behind the plate, Powell caught six different pitchers as MSU (16-9) went with a bullpen game, and most were highly effective. Noah Sullivan made his third straight midweek start and threw two scoreless innings, but did not have the normal sharpness to his breaking pitches.
Kevin Mannell was the first man out of the bullpen, and his own throwing error on a pickoff attempt led to Samford’s only run of the game in the third, but he settled down after that against the bottom of Samford’s lineup.
Powell also helped control the running game, an issue in the series loss to the Sooners. Leadoff batter Jeffrey Ince stole second after leading off the first with a single, but Powell threw him out trying to steal again in the third, and he also gunned down Trey Higgins — who entered the game a perfect 10-for-10 on stolen base attempts — in the fourth.
“We made it a big point,” Powell said. “We switched some things up. It was more of a priority for us, and we took control of it.”
Freshman left-hander Dane Burns took over on the mound in the fifth and was outstanding, retiring all five batters he faced with three strikeouts. Redshirt freshman Mikhai Grant worked out of a bases-loaded jam with three strikeouts in the seventh, and Ben Davis — a weekend starter the last three series — tossed a scoreless eighth. Nate Williams struck out the side in the ninth to finish things off.
Burns’ fastball sits comfortably in the low 90s, not as hard as some of his teammates, but it plays faster than that due to the way it interacts with his breaking stuff.
“That’s all (pitching coach Justin) Parker’s doing,” Burns said. “I came in here and he changed a lot of things up, and I never questioned him. I just worked with him. That’s really all it is.”
MSU scored the first run of the game in the second when Aaron Downs and Nolan Stevens hit back-to-back singles, and Downs came home on a Gatlin Sanders sacrifice fly. A wild pitch brought in the hosts’ third run of the fourth after Powell’s single, and Hunter Hines broke it open with a two-run double in the seventh. State was just 2-for-10 with runners in scoring position, but those two hits drove in four of MSU’s six runs.
It will be a quick turnaround with the Bulldogs heading back on the road to start a three-game series at No. 8 LSU on Thursday night.
“It’s a tougher start, because you’re playing teams that are playing really well,” head coach Chris Lemonis said. “We haven’t done enough. There are so many close games in there. I haven’t watched (LSU) a ton. Obviously they’re very good. You have to go in there and compete. We’ve had success there, but we’ve competed our asses off. This group is going to have to go in there and earn every inning, every strike, every hit they get.”
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