STARKVILLE — Elijah MacNamee played in the outfield, Trey Jolly pitched and Hunter Vansau spent more time as a designated hitter than anywhere else, yet all three lived the same truth.
Going from a junior college to the rigors of Southeastern Conference baseball is hard. In all three of their cases, it took several weeks for them to figure it all out before producing well in spurts near the end. Mississippi State now reboots the process with a new crop of junior college additions.
This is the first fall as a MSU baseball player for six players joining from junior colleges, all but two of them being pitchers desperately needed after the depth crisis in last year’s pitching staff. MSU coach Andy Cannizaro’s way of getting them ready for the adjustment isn’t one of compassion: he plans on throwing them at the best MSU has to offer as soon as possible.
“I think it’s good to get those guys where they face (starting pitchers Konnor) Pilkington and (Jacob) Billingsley and all the returning guys we have. It’s kind of a welcome to college baseball moment,” Cannizaro said. “You try to feed them that as much as you can before the lights come on in February.
“(For pitchers), I think you try to put them on a mound and have them face (Jake) Mangum and Vansau and MacNamee and (Hunter) Stovall as much as possible. That’s as good as it’s going to be from us. Create that situation where that’s the matchup they get.”
They’ve seen plenty of that in the opening weeks of fall camp, but they get their first taste in a true game situation this week as the team goes to Jackson’s Wills-Smith Stadium for an intrasquad three-game series. All scrimmages there are free admission; the team will start at 6 p.m. Friday and 7 p.m. Saturday before ending the series at noon on Sunday.
None of them fear the gauntlet that awaits.
“I think it’s best because you’re going to have to get used to it at some point,” pitcher Jared Liebelt said, a new transfer from Waubonsee Community College in Illinois. “What we’re facing in the spring and the schedule we have is a tough one. I don’t really see a point in easing us into when we’re not going to be eased into it when game time comes.”
Liebelt will join Cole Marsh and John Mason as junior college pitching additions taking on their first intrasquad scrimmages as Bulldogs. Marsh credited the competitive environment of practices for getting him ready for it: he said when he first pitched in the Palmeiro Center he faced Mangum, Vansau and MacNamee.
MSU will also be breaking in three new junior college bats: first baseman Alex Pener, infielder Will Craft and catcher Marshall Gilbert. For counsel on what’s to come, they can go to one of the guys that Cannizaro is using to test the new pitchers: MacNamee.
Last season was MacNamee’s first at MSU after transferring in from Blinn Community College in Texas. MacNamee knows the adjustment period all too well — he took a .188 batting average into SEC play last year — but figured it out through the conference schedule and ended the season as an indispensible part of MSU’s outfield and a .267 average that was once as high as .286.
He knows exactly what’s coming for them.
“JUCO, you run into one guy every now and then and you think, ‘Oh, that guy’s a stud, he’s going places,'” MacNamee said. “Here, it’s that stud every single time you’re hitting.”
Before that spring came a fall in which MacNamee was given the same treatment this year’s newcomers are soon to receive. Having been through it, MacNamee is a live example of why Cannizaro is throwing them at the best he has to offer come this weekend’s three-game series.
“Basically,” Cannizaro said, “what we’re going to try to do is create as competitive of a fall as we possibly can.”
Follow Dispatch sports writer Brett Hudson on Twitter, @Brett_Hudson
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