No. 17 Mississippi State went on the road Tuesday for a nonconference midweek tuneup at Samford looking to dispel some pent up dissatisfaction after being swept at home in back-to-back SEC series, and the team looked more like its usual self – productive hitting and dominating pitching – as it cruised to an 11-1 run-rule victory that lasted only seven innings.
Mississippi State (27-10, 7-8 SEC) first baseman Reed Stallman stepped up to the plate in his first at-bat and hammered a pitch over the right wall of Samford’s Joe Lee Griffin Field for a two-run homer in the first inning and set the early tone for a night that was to be all maroon and white. The Bulldogs piled on five more runs in the second inning – a two-RBI single by Aiden Teel, an RBI double by Ace Reese and another two-RBI single by Gehrig Frei – for an already commanding 7-0 lead.
The home-standing Bulldogs, though, struck for a run off starting pitcher Chris Billingsley in the third inning on an RBI single by Jake Souder for their only score of the game. Mississippi State issued a barrage of a scoring response in the fifth inning – a solo home run by Kevin Milewski, another RBI double by Reese and a RBI single by Noah Sullivan – to put the stamp on a much-need victory for MSU after being struck out 32 times by Tennessee over the weekend.
“I was really pleased with the offensive approach tonight,” head coach Brian O’Connor said. “…Tonight was a night that we took advantage of opportunities of what the game tells you to do. … (Sullivan) got a bunt down for a base hit, the hit and run with Aiden Teel and Bryce Chance at first base – that’s the kind of offensive team we need to be. Just to think that you can stand on plate and just hit and hit, (hitting) is tough to do in our league, so I was just really proud. The second inning we scored five runs with two outs and nobody on and you’ve seen us do that at times early on in the season and we’ve gotten away from that, and that’s our identity of what we need to do.”
Reese went 3-for-3 at the plate for a team-high three hits while Teel and Stallman both went 2-for-4 to help the team rack up 10 hits and 11 RBI. The Bulldogs had a strong outing on the mound as well as four different pitchers combined to hold Samford to just three hits, two off Billingsley, and two walks. Maddox Miller came in for two hitless innings in relief of Billingsley and got the win (2-2). Tyler Pitzer worked the sixth inning and blanked Samford, and Peyton Fowler closed the game, only allowing one last hit.
“I’m proud of Billingsley. Peyton Fowler has been a nice spark for us. Listen, we are going to need everybody down this stretch run,” O’Connor said. “We are going to be needing to be clicking on all cylinders and just proud of those two guys.”
The win provided a boost for the slumping Bulldogs and they’ll hope to use it this weekend in their return to conference play at South Carolina (19-19, 5-10), a squad that has been struggling through the majority of the season but is riding a four-game win streak that includes a sweep of Missouri. MSU is on a six-game conference skid.
“The Gamecocks swept Missouri this past weekend and so they are playing really good baseball,” O’Connor said. “We have an opportunity to go on the road in an SEC series and where we are at right now we need to go down there and play great, winning baseball. That’s just the fact of it.”
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