STARKVILLE — The Mississippi State baseball team lost two-thirds of its starting rotation in the very first weekend of the 2021 season.
Will Bednar was scratched from his first start with neck soreness. Eric Cerantola never even made the trip to Texas. The Bulldogs needed some help, and they got it.
“It made other guys be prepared, and we had other guys prepared, and they did a great job,” coach Chris Lemonis said.
Former Itawamba Community College pitcher Houston Harding and five relievers held TCU to three runs in MSU’s second game. In the third, freshman Jackson Fristoe delivered three scoreless innings, and grad student Carlisle Koestler got the win against Texas Tech thanks to a strong relief appearance.
It was the first time the Bulldogs had to deal with adverse circumstances in 2021. It wasn’t the last.
“I think some of those things that happened early to us made us stronger at the end,” Lemonis said.
The proof is clear: Mississippi State went on to capture the 2021 College World Series title, the first team national championship in school history.
Now it’s a year later, and the Bulldogs are facing questions before the 2022 season even starts at 2 p.m. Friday against No. 24 Long Beach State.
Can they replace Tanner Allen and Rowdey Jordan? Can they make up for losing all three weekend starters? Can they replicate the success they found last season?
It’s time to find out.
“It’s a new year,” catcher Logan Tanner said. “Nobody’s going to feel sorry for you if we get our eyeballs beat in this year. We’re really looking forward to a new year and getting on to bigger and better things.”
It’s hard to get much bigger and better than the Bulldogs did last summer. MSU earned the No. 7 national seed in the NCAA tournament, sweeping through Regionals and Super Regionals to reach the College World Series. In Omaha, the Bulldogs went 5-2 in all, defeating Vanderbilt in the best-of-three title series.
It was an accomplishment no one has forgotten. That might never happen.
“Everybody I run into in the community is talking about, ‘What does it feel like to win a national championship?’” senior outfielder Brad Cumbest said Feb. 1.
To Cumbest, being on top of the college baseball world practically didn’t feel real. But it’s a moment Mississippi State is trying hard to replicate.
Pitcher Landon Sims said the sentiment of being the last man standing simply gives the Bulldogs a push to run it back to the top in 2022.
“We know how good it felt to do it, so we’re going to do everything we can to get another one,” Sims said.
That won’t be easy with Sims set to lead a rotation Tanner admitted was “unproven” despite its talent. Sims, Mississippi State’s ace closer a season ago, will be followed by some combination of Cade Smith, Jackson Fristoe, Preston Johnson and KC Hunt. Lemonis said he’s not afraid to have multiple pitchers each go four or five innings to help shoulder the load.
But Mississippi State — ranked fourth in the preseason D1Baseball poll — will have to be up to the task in the Southeastern Conference, where Lemonis expects offenses to be better than ever. Just in the SEC West, Ole Miss returns its lineup after last year’s Super Regionals trip, and 2021 No. 1 overall seed Arkansas has most of its team back.
The Bulldogs wouldn’t have it any other way.
“You come to the SEC because you want to be the best and you want to play the best,” Tanner said. “It’s the best conference in America, and I don’t think it’s particularly close. It’s why you come here: You come here to play the best.”
Many of those elite teams Mississippi State outlasted a season ago might be after them this year.
Even after the Bulldogs reached new heights in 2021, Lemonis said his job remains much the same as his fourth season in charge begins — “except everybody’s gunning for you.”
Cumbest, though, had a different perspective on things.
“I don’t think it’s like that,” he said. “I think we’re going to be gunning for them. The target’s on their back, not ours. We’re just going to attack.”
With the voids left by Jordan and Allen at the top of Mississippi State’s lineup, attacking offensively might not come as easily as it did last season. But MSU returns six offensive starters: Tanner, Cumbest, first baseman Luke Hancock, third baseman Kamren James, right fielder Kellum Clark and shortstop Lane Forsythe.
Together, they form a lineup Cumbest indiciated could be more potent than its 2021 version.
“I would say we’ve got a lot more guys on the team back than last year,” he said. “We are kind of young in some spots, but in some other spots we’re kind of old, veteran guys.”
Tanner said the Bulldogs must also develop the chemistry of last season’s players, all of whom became close over the course of the year.
If Mississippi State can do that while answering the big questions that loom over the 2022 season, another special year could be on the way.
And it’s just what the Bulldogs have in mind.
“We’re going to do all we can to attack the next one,” Sims said.
Theo DeRosa reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @Theo_DeRosa.
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