STARKVILLE – It just keeps getting worse for Mississippi State’s baseball team.
On the heels of dropping their first two Southeastern Conference series, the Bulldogs entered this weekend against Auburn desperately needing a series win to keep pace in the SEC race. And after enduring a 3-0 shutout loss against Southern Miss on Tuesday night, the MSU offense opened the weekend in need of a spark.
Two games in, that spark still hasn’t come. And neither has a run.
MSU’s offense has continued to sputter against Auburn, as the Tigers followed a 5-0 Friday night win with a 4-0 shutout on Saturday. The first loss, where Auburn limited MSU to five hits, was MSU’s first shutout loss to Auburn in 39 years.
By being blanked twice, MSU now has gone 28 straight innings without scoring a run.
“Things aren’t going our way right now,” said MSU coach John Cohen. “We’ve got to be really tough mentally and find a way to compete. We’ve got to score, and you score with toughness. We’re not very tough right now. We’ve got great kids that are working their tails off but we don’t have much mental toughness right now and that comes back on me.”
That lack of toughness, cited more than once by Cohen, was evident on both Friday and Saturday.
In the series opener, the Bulldogs never seriously threatened to dent the scoring column, as no MSU base runner advanced past second base. The middle of MSU’s batting order, from No. 3 hitter Gavin Collins to No. 6 hitter Wes Rea, combined to go 0-for-12 with five strikeouts.
MSU managed just one extra-base hit, a double by freshman Ryan Gridley, and only second baseman John Holland managed multiple hits with two singles.
“It’s very frustrating,” said MSU right fielder Jake Vickerson, who had one of the Bulldogs’ five hits. “I don’t really think we are doing anything wrong right now. We are right there but it’s just not going our way right now.”
The Bulldogs made a winner out of Auburn starter Cole Lipscomb, who struck out seven and allowed just four hits in seven innings of work.
That meant MSU starter Preston Brown took the loss, despite pitching the first complete game of his career. Brown, MSU’s ace, gave up a four-run outburst to the Tigers in the third inning, a frame dotted by two errors from MSU third baseman Matt Spruill.
After falling behind 5-0, Brown finished his start with six scoreless innings and retired 12 hitters in a row at one point.
“I thought Preston did a great job for us tonight and really, outside of a few miscues, he was right there,” said Cohen. “We had the issues at third base where we didn’t make some easy plays. Preston put us in a great position to win the ball game and we didn’t support him offensively.”
MSU’s offensive malaise continued on Saturday. Facing Auburn’s most reliable pitcher, sophomore Keegan Thompson, the Bulldogs never mustered much offense, moving a runner past second base just once.
That sequence, in the first inning, perfectly encapsulated MSU’s recent slump. After left fielder Cody Brown singled to open the game and eventually moved to third base on a wild pitch, he was stranded there after cleanup hitter Jacob Robson botched a bunt attempt and Ryan Gridley struck out.
That was MSU’s only scoring threat of the day.
“We don’t hit balls hard, we make easy outs,” said Cohen. “We’re not putting pressure on the defense and when you don’t do those things, it’s hard to score runs.”
The numbers are getting historically bad for the Bulldogs’ offense. The recent stretch is MSU’s first time to endure three straight shutouts since 1975, and the 2-0 start to the series was Auburn’s first pair of back-to-back SEC shutouts since 1988.
On Saturday, MSU managed two extra-base hits, doubles by Holland and Vickerson. Other than that, though, the Bulldogs could manage nothing. A day after striking out 10 times, the Bulldogs whiffed nine more times on Saturday.
“This is that time when you need your older guys to take over and do those things for you, and they’re not,” said Cohen. “Wes Rea had a walk and then he hit the ball hard late in the game, but outside of that, our older guys aren’t setting the pace for us right now. But this is a game where things can turn on a dime, and hopefully that starts for us soon.”
By Saturday, when MSU put up nine more scoreless innings to make a loser out of starter Austin Sexton – 4.1 innings, two earned runs – MSU’s players were beginning to become proactive in trying to turn things around.
“Our players are talking about it right now,” said Cohen. “They are in there trying to figure out how to get this thing right. But talk is cheap. We have to see it.”
To Cohen, MSU’s recent struggles aren’t due to a lack of hard work. Instead, the coach believes the opposite may be true.
“Our kids will keep working hard,” said Cohen. “To be honest, they may be working too hard. Nobody in America is working harder than our kids and it’s biting us a bit. That’s my fault. We need to relax and just put up some good at-bats.”
The two teams will finish the series today at 1:30 p.m.
Follow Dispatch sports writer Brandon Walker on Twitter @BWonStateBeat
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