Postseason plans still possible after Ole Miss clinches its third SEC series
Those Summer plans that might be in the beginning stages are going to have to be put on the backburner for the moment. The Ole Miss baseball team is keeping its postseason pulse alive after second straight win.
For the third time this season the Rebels won a Southeastern Conference series, beating Auburn 5-4 on Saturday at Plainsman Park. They took the series opener on Friday by a score of 11-7.
There is still plenty of work to be done but Ole Miss (25-21, 9-14 SEC) has taken care of the first two steps this weekend and will go for the series sweep on Sunday at 3 p.m. CT.
After Saturday’s action the Rebels are tied with LSU for the final two spots in the SEC Tournament taking place in Hoover, Alabama later this month. Both teams are two games clear of Missouri (7-16) and six games clear of Auburn (3-20).
There are still seven SEC games remaining, including next week’s home finale against No. 1 Texas A&M and then the regular season finale in Baton Rouge in two weeks.
Following Saturday’s win the Rebels are 24th in the RPI and have a strength of schedule ranking of 2. Both metrics are the reasons Ole Miss is still sitting with a plausible path to the NCAA Tournament.
The desire for consistency by head coach Mike Bianco has been there all season but really becoming a must-have in recent weeks as the season was winding down. Friday and Saturday have shown a small step towards that nightly consistent effort.
In Saturday’s win Ole Miss showed off its bullpen prowess that left them midway through the year.
Josh Mallitz and Wes Mendes worked 5.1 innings of scoreless relief with the latter closing things down with three shutout innings.
After starter Liam Doyle allowed four runs off two hits in 3.2 innings of work it was up to the bullpen to do its job for a second straight night. It was mission accomplished.
Mendes was the most impressive with one of his better appearances of the season, recording one strikeout and issuing one walk.
“Wes has got tremendous stuff and he’s not a ball thrower,” Bianco said. “But I think being a freshman is tough. It’s a tough league to have success in but tonight, man, he looked like a veteran out there.”
Mallitz also had a poignant moment of the game in the fifth inning. After throwing a pickoff attempt into shallow center field and moving two Auburn runners into scoring position he cleaned up his mess with back-to-back strikeouts and then a flyout to keep the game tied at 4.
Offensively, Saturday was not as explosive of a night as Friday but there were still some fireworks. Andrew Fischer got his 17th home run of the season with a two-run home run in the top of the fifth to tie the game up after Auburn scored two go-ahead runs in the bottom of the fourth.
Then there was patient at the plate in the top of the ninth by Ethan Groff, drawing a walk after going down in the count 0-2 to load the bases with one out. Groff’s walk allowed for Fischer to have an out in his back pocket and set up his sacrifice-fly to center field, scoring Hughes as the winning run.
