No. 2 Ole Miss' bullpen showing its muscle and proving to be a strength

With four non-conference games left before the conference season begins, the bullpen for No. 2 Ole Miss has backed up the talk of their depth.

The argument of the level of competition they are staring at 60 feet away can be made, but just like the offense has to hit the ball, the pitchers have to successfully throw strikes and get outs. Both are doing just that.

Depth was brought up ad nauseam throughout the preseason when the topic of the bullpen was mentioned. Head coach Mike Bianco even referred to it being their strength over the starting pitching, which the numbers show is true through nearly the first four weeks of the season.

Last week’s five-game stretch can be used and the best example as it includes the Rebels (11-1) road trip to Central Florida where they took two out of three games from the Knights.

The Rebel relievers gave up two earned runs over the five-game stretch for an earned run average of nearly 0.80. Including the starters, the staff’s ERA for the season just over 2.00 — only including pitchers who have at least three innings under their belt.

“I’m really happy with it,” Bianco said of his bullpen after Sunday’s game in Orlando. “There’s more in us, and we have to get better and be a little more dominant. Again, its been a bright spot. It’s the guys that have been able to hold the lead or keep the game in tact. Some of the game it’s been tough to tell because some games we’ve extended the lead, so that’s why it was important today, when the game was still in tact, we pitched it really well… I thought with a lot of pressure on the line, on the road in a close game, our guys handled it.”

Major bright spots from the new arms in the bullpen have been Hunter Elliott, Riley Maddox and Dylan DeLucia.

Maddox has a zero ERA with only five innings pitches while Elliott and DeLucia have ERAs of 3.00 and 5.40, respectively. Elliott and DeLucia have combined for 25 strikeouts

Beyond the numbers it is how the trio has performed in high pressure situations. All three have been brought into a game during a crucial moment and have routinely gotten the Rebels out of trouble mostly unscathed.

DeLucia is the most recent to have a strong performance, pitching four innings of relief on Sunday and not allowing a run off a hit while striking out six. It is the junior right-handers longest outing of the season by far with the next closest being 1.2 innings against Arkansas State during a 15-5 game.

“That’s as good as we’ve been on the mound for an extended period of time,” Bianco said of DeLucia’s outing on Sunday. “Four innings from a reliever standpoint. That’s as dominant as anyone. We talked at the beginning of the year, the bullpen could be the strength of this staff. This weekend, it showed.”

The usual suspects out of the bullpen have also delivered when called upon but it has been in smaller sample sizes.

Wes Burton, Jackson Kimbrell and closer Brandon Johnson have combined for only 8.2 innings pitched through the first 12 games. Some of that is due to the Rebels not getting beyond the seventh inning nearly half of their games played this year and other reasons could be due to the performances of the new faces.

Jack Dougherty has also been a bright spot among the returning relievers, but he is getting a promotion of sorts for the forseeable future.

On Monday, Bianco announced a change was needed in the starting rotation and Dougherty is getting the ball on Sunday in the series finale against Oral Roberts. In five innings pitched, Dougherty has not allowed a run off one hit and struck out 12 of 17 batters faced.