TALLAHASSEE — Mississippi State pitchers Karson Ligon and Luke Dotson had combined to throw more than 150 pitches by the seventh inning against Florida State on Sunday, but the Bulldogs held a narrow 2-0 lead thanks to solo shots from Gehrig Frei and Joe Powell.
Then, Myles Bailey stepped up to the plate. The freshman sent a 2-2 pitch to deep center for a double, setting up Cal Fisher to send the very next pitch over the right field fence to tie the game.
An exhausting six innings of clutch pitching and defensive work were suddenly all for naught. Though the game wasn’t over yet, it certainly felt like it.
The Seminoles jumped on reliever Ryan McPherson, pitching on just two days of rest, in the eighth, loading the bases with no outs and eventually plating the final three runs in what would eventually be a 5-2 FSU win.
With the win, the Seminoles booked their place in the Super Regional round for the second year in a row and sent MSU home to Starkville. The Bulldogs have seen their season end in the regional round each of the last two years.
“Just went to war out there today with guys that were on fumes,” interim head coach Justin Parker said, “and we just came up a little short to a good ball club.”
The Bulldogs won a close 3-2 battle with Northeastern in an elimination game earlier in the day, a game that was their sole focus after the Saturday loss to FSU.
“Our focus was solely on the first game,” Parker said. “There wouldn’t be a second game if we didn’t take care of the first game. We almost got a second wind between games, and I thought we came out with a little more energy. The environment, the crowd helped. It was a high-level focus on the first game, and then got a shot in the arm and got to chill out a little bit.”
It’s hard to win two games like that in one day, especially with the Bulldog bullpen nearly exhausted, but Ligon and Dotson made it a battle. The starter struck out seven batters and got out of three early jams before Dotson came on in relief. The Seminoles left 15 runners on base, a credit to the MSU staff and defense, but it just wasn’t a method of survival for the Bulldogs.
FSU starter Wes Mendes, an Ole Miss transfer, got the win on the mound after going eight innings with nine strikeouts, allowing just two earned runs — both on solo home runs. He was efficient in limiting Mississippi State’s offensive opportunities and bought valuable time for the Seminoles’ batters to finally get runners home.
Still, the Bulldogs ended the year in the postseason after they were on the outside looking in a month ago. Athletic Director Zac Selmon decided to fire head coach Chris Lemonis, who led the team to its first national championship in 2021, and entrusted pitching coach Justin Parker the rest of the way as interim head coach. The Bulldogs went 11-4 under Parker, with the final two losses coming against the Seminoles.
Rumors of the team’s next coach were flying around before the team had even set foot in Florida. Links to Virginia head coach Brian O’Connor made the rounds on Thursday, and while the Bulldogs were fighting for their postseason lives on Sunday night, fans on social media were tracking the flight path of an MSU-registered aircraft on its way to Charlottesville.
The frustration was evident from Parker after the loss, who noted the rumors were “hanging over” the team all weekend, but noted he was proud of how the team managed it. His words hit especially hard, especially because they came just an hour before MSU confirmed the appointment of O’Connor as the next head coach. There was also some resignation about the job search just being part of the game.
“It’s just a distraction,” he said. “It’s impossible to quantify how it impacted this weekend, other than you just manage the personalities and you focus on baseball, and there is other stuff going on. Just the way it is.”
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