Tywone Malone adding more power to Ole Miss baseball's lineup
When Tywone Malone sent the baseball flying out of Oxford-University Stadium to lead No. 2 Ole Miss to a 14-3 win over VCU on Sunday he displayed what every teammate said he possessed: power.
The 6-foot-4, 315-pound freshman first baseman in only his second at-bat of his career as a Rebel destroyed the fastball off the plate and sent it 404 feet over the right field wall. It was a display of what Malone, head coach Mike Bianco and Rebel fans expect to continue seeing.
Through the Rebels first six games, Malone has not had but only two at-bats with both coming last weekend against VCU. The reason for it is due to Malone only being full-time with baseball for a little over a month after wrapping up his first football season in January.
Malone is yet again another dual-athlete that will spend his falls at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium and his spring on Swayze Field.
“It’s tough,” Bianco said of Malone making the transition. “He worked in the fall, sparingly, because he’s a football player. We saw it with John Rhys (Plumlee). We saw it with (Jerrion) Ealy. We’ve seen it with Senquez (Golson) and others who have done this. It’s not easy to do that. Just want him to get comfortable. Try to get some at-bats. Try to get his timing down. It’s difficult but.”
Getting back into the swing of things on the baseball diamond is a bigger challenge for Malone than just having spent the last few months playing football. He has not played baseball since 2019.
Malone missed his junior year at Bergen Catholic High School in Oradell, N.J. due to the COVID-19 pandemic shutting down spring sports everywhere in 2020. Then an injury sidelined Malone during his senior year in 2021.
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Adding all that together along with having to get out of football shape and back into baseball shape has provided a challenge for Malone to start the spring.
“It’s been a grind,” Malone said. “Baseball has always been a passion of mine. I knew it was going to be tough not playing for two years and then coming out, but coach (Bianco) gave me an opportunity and I just had to make the best of it.
“It was a lot because you got to get back into shape. Not playing the sport for a long time you start to kind of lose things. I just pretty much had to grind and get everything back to the way I had it before.”
The sample size is extremely limited, of course, but Malone is hitting .500 with two RBIs, a home run and a slugging percentage of 2.000. He may be still be grinding, but Malone might be getting things back to like it’s 2019 sooner than later.
