STARKVILLE — Zach Neff is just a couple of months past his 22nd birthday and JP France just a month past his 23rd, but on a Mississippi State baseball team routinely starting four freshmen, they can be construed as the old men of the group.
They joke about it amongst each other, but age is the reason they were brought here. After a 2017 season plagued with a thin pitching staff, MSU turned to college athletics’ version of the hired gun, the graduate transfer, to immediately address a need and be on their way once they do so. It ended up finding two; both gambles are paying off.
In recent weeks, the Bulldogs have turned to Neff and France enough to make them the team’s most prized bullpen assets. Neither shows signs of slowing down as MSU begins a three-game series at Kentucky (31-17, 11-13 Southeastern Conference) 6:30 p.m. Friday (ESPNU)
“We knew we were going to have some big roles coming in, being grad transfers,” France said. “Me and him always talk about it, how the two old guys are getting it done.”
They enter the weekend as MSU’s two best qualified pitchers, those with at least 30 innings. Neff’s 2.13 earned run average is just ahead of JP France’s 2.90 but France (10.26 strikeouts per nine innings, 46 in 40 1/3 innings) strikes out more batters than Neff (7.57 per nine, 32 in 38 innings). Neff doesn’t allow walks, giving up six in 38 innings and France doesn’t allow hits, giving up 37 for a batting average allowed of .237.
As the numbers suggest, France and Neff have reached peak efficiency in different ways.
Before MSU could make Neff one of its best pitchers, it had to dedicate him to a certain role. Neff both started and relieved in his years at Austin Peay, making 48 appearances in his final two seasons with 10 of them being starts. It was decided in his first conversations with the coaching staff and through the fall that Neff would be a reliever, which was perfectly fine with him.
Then came the inevitable adjustment period. Neff’s first two outings — an inning at Southern Miss and 4 1/3 against Texas A&M-Corpus Christi — were not an enviable start, exiting with a 6.75 ERA after allowing nine hits in 5 1/3 innings.
“The adjustment from an OVC (Ohio Valley Conference) school to an SEC school was kind of a shock at first,” Neff said. “I had a little bit of a learning curve, but I think JP and I going through it together helped a little bit.”
From there, as Neff put it, he caught a groove and never looked back. His confidence has been high since March, and understandably so given what it took to shut opponents down for his new school.
“That my stuff was good enough,” Neff said. “(MSU interim coach Gary) Henderson always preached that to me, and once I started getting them out at this level, confidence rose and finding the bottom of the zone became easier.
“I wanted to prove to the guys and to myself that I’m better than that. It wasn’t the fear of failure, it was having that in the past and not wanting that to be the result of my season or of our season.”
The result has made Neff one of MSU’s most versatile bullpen pieces: he has two saves, both against SEC teams, but also has appearances as long as 4 2/3 innings, 3 1/3 and 3 innings, all of those also against conference foes. When Neff goes short, he uses the fastball early and puts batters away with a slider; he introduces a changeup when he goes longer.
Not that MSU needs Neff to go long all that often; it has France for that.
France is the one more equipped to run his pitch count into the 60s and higher: he was a starting pitcher at Tulane, starting 27 times over his final two years with the Green Wave and compiling a record of 11-9, both years keeping his ERA under 4. He knew better than to expect a starting role coming in as a graduate transfer, but it was his hope; he came back from winter with some forearm tightness that likely set him back in that pursuit, but he only needed a few weeks to settle into the bullpen role.
“The thing that’s different with these guys is they have a history of success, a reservoir they can tap into of a lot of success before they got here,” Henderson said.
France showed the value of it: in the entire month of March, over 15 2/3 innings, France allowed four earned runs. Some of MSU’s best pitching of the SEC season has come from France: his four perfect innings with nine strikeouts in the sweep of Arkansas, his five innings with one-run allowed to beat Alabama, his 3 1/3 without an earned run against Vanderbilt.
France has been so good, it begs the question: might he be the answer to MSU’s Sunday pitching woes?
In MSU’s last five series finales, the starting pitcher has lasted 3 or fewer innings three times; MSU even made a change to try to fix it, going from Jacob BIllingsley to Denver McQuary for the final game of the Alabama series.
For the second week in a row, MSU (27-22, 11-13 SEC) went with a to be announced Sunday starter, behind Konnor Pilkington on Friday and Ethan Small on Saturday. If France isn’t the Sunday starter, there is a very good reason for it.
“Certainly you think about that stuff all the time. What I would like to do is have as strong a bullpen as we possibly can, that’s my motivation,” Henderson said. “It’s the balance of how confident you want your club to be with the guy coming in.”
Henderson referenced a certain shot of adrenaline a lockdown reliever gives a team when he enters the game — almost trying to recreate the effect Spencer Price had on last year’s team. As he recovers from Tommy John surgery, France could be the one giving MSU the late game boost of energy.
“If they’re effective, it’s a huge shot; it doesn’t guarantee you a win, but it’s a huge shot,” Henderson said.
As of late, both of them have been effective — and they know it. At least, Neff does.
“My stuff is good enough, here it is, try to hit me.”
Follow Dispatch sports writer Brett Hudson on Twitter @Brett_Hudson
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