Ole Miss hoping over-reliance on freshmen arms will 'pay dividends' down the road

Out of necessity and out of starting the development process of its young arms the Ole Miss baseball team has lived and died off several freshmen pitchers this season. The struggles are there for the present time but out of those struggles is at least the expectation of better outings ahead in seasons to come.

Since the season started there has been at least one freshman in the weekend rotation. Something this not uncommon at all under head coach Mike Bianco’s tenure at Ole Miss. Hunter Elliott became the freshman phenom a season ago on way to a national championship.

This year’s young guns have been Grayson Saunier and more recently JT Quinn. Saunier was named the Saturday starter from the onset of the season with Elliott on Friday and junior Xavier Rivas on Sunday.

Those growing pains hit Saunier as each outing grew less productive as the weekends ticked off the schedule. He eventually was removed from the rotation in lieu of Quinn who became the Sunday starter for the Texas A&M weekend with Rivas moving to Saturdays behind Jack Dougherty on Fridays in Elliott’s absence.

Saunier has started in all 10 games he has appeared in this season with this past Sunday’s game against Georgia his first return to the weekend. In three Southeastern Conference starts Saunier has an earned run average of 7.30 and given up 10 runs — all earned — off 17 hits while striking out 14 and walking three other batters.

Sunday’s start was Saunier’s best outing, going a career-best six innings and giving up a run off two hits and striking out six Bulldog batters.

Quinn has appeared in seven SEC games and started the last five weekends and has an ERA in those games similar to Saunier’s at 7.31. He has given up 26 runs — 23 earned — off 32 hits.

Saunier and Quinn have combined for 45 percent of innings thrown by Ole Miss freshmen pitchers.

The stat is not that staggering on its own with Quinn throwing a freshman-high 47 innings and Saunier throwing 39 innings.

Quinn and Saunier have experienced ups and downs but progress towards next season and beyond is being noticed.

“We talked how hard it is as a freshman, doesn’t matter if it’s a position player or a pitcher, to play in this league. But it’s especially hard when your team’s not playing well,” Bianco said following Tuesday’s win over Little Rock. “You’re put into a lot of situations that are tough. I fall short of saying unfair. …It is what it is and for those guys like Grayson and Quinn and others. A lot of the news guys, probably my guess is 50 percent of the innings have been thrown by freshmen.”

Bianco is nearly spot on with his guess of freshmen arms throwing half of this season’s total innings. Of the 388 innings pitched by Ole Miss pitchers 49.2 percent of them (191.1) have occurred with a freshman arm on the mound.

The bullpen and midweek starts have been anchored at times by the Rebels young arms. Jordan Vera has the next highest number of innings pitched behind Quinn and Saunier with 29.1 and reliever Sam Tookoian has 28.1

Other freshman numbers include Brayden Jones working 27 innings, Cole Ketchum throwing 13.1 and Mason Morris with 7.1 innings.

With the loss of Josh Mallitz last fall, who would have been a strong candidate to be Ole Miss’ closer along with an injury to Matt Parenteau the bullpen has been less than 100 percent since February.

“When you do that and you have the season that we’ve had to this point there’s going to be tough situations for them,” Bianco added. “Hopefully, rather than look at it as excuses you look at it as opportunities where this is going to help them grow. Sometimes growing’s hard. Sometimes growing’s tough and at times it’s not fun but I think it’s going to pay dividends in the future. Hopefully the future is here at the end of the year.”