Jack's takes from South Carolina's forgettable loss on Saturday

After playing one of its better games on Friday, South Carolina went out and played a very sloppy game on Saturday, losing 8-3 to Missouri.

Right from the start, the Gamecocks didn’t play well enough to win the game. The bats weren’t hitting, the pitching wasn’t there and the defense didn’t provide much help. Now, they will have to find a way to win the series on Sunday afternoon.

Here are my takes from the loss.

What’s up with Eli Jones?

For the second straight weekend, Jones got roughed up and didn’t look at all like himself on the mound. Missouri scored four runs off him in the first inning, and he could never quite recover.

Jones only lasted 2.2 innings, giving up five runs on seven hits with two strikeouts and three walks. He’s now 3-3 on the year with a 4.53 ERA, a far cry from the ace he had been for this pitching staff.

It’s sort of been like this for the last month with him. Jones hasn’t made it through the fifth inning in four of his last five outings and has given up four or more runs in three of those.

The thing with him is that he got ahead in a lot of counts but couldn’t consistently get the third strike. Instead, Missouri continued to get its runs in two-strike situations on Saturday.

Moving forward, expect Jones to stay in the Saturday role, unless Mark Kingston feels he wants to do something different. I asked him if he felt those struggles had anything to do with moving him back in the rotation and he said no. Kingston said he’ll work to figure out what the problem has been for Jones.

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Defense was horrendous

While Jones didn’t pitch well on Saturday, his defense behind him was simply not good enough to win the game.

When Missouri broke out for four runs in the first, one of them came off a bobbled ball in left field by Kennedy Jones. Had Jones fielded the ball cleanly and not let it go loose on the transfer, the runner from second wouldn’t have scored.

Later in the frame with two outs, a routine ground ball was hit to second base. The only problem was that Ethan Petry couldn’t get over to the first base bag in time, allowing two more runs to score.

In the third, Gavin Casas fielded a high chopper hit to him at third base. But his throw was way off the mark and put that runner aboard second with one out. Two batters later, a run came around to score on an RBI single. Totally preventable.

This is what can happen when you take more offense over defense. And I totally agree with the decision to do that. But this can be the side effect of that. To be fair, I think the infield defense has been pretty good since the lineup change. And one bad game shouldn’t reconfigure the whole lineup. I’d expect things to stay the same. They just have to make the simple plays and things will be fine.

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Early pitching change completely shifted everything

In baseball, you always have to be ready for the unexpected. This is a game where so much unpredictability can occur. That happened to be the case on Saturday when Missouri had to make a pitching change after its starter, Javyn Pimental, only recorded one out in the first inning. He’d leave the game with an injury.

After a brief delay, the Tigers brought in right-hander Carter Roustad to work out of a big jam. The Gamecocks would have the bases loaded with one out. And this switch completely changed the inning for them. They’d come up empty and couldn’t bring a run home.

For the most part, everything was working well for Roustad, who pitched 6.2 innings of three-run ball. He struck out six without a walk. It was a solid outing to pick up the win with the way Missouri’s offense had broken out.

After the game, Kingston didn’t want to make an excuse for how the unexpected pitching change shifted the momentum in the game. But he said the offense should have been able to overcome that challenge. Instead, the Tigers used South Carolina’s aggressiveness at the plate to their advantage and made them go after a lot of pitches out of the zone.

Heading into Sunday’s finale, neither team has named a starting pitcher yet. I’d expect South Carolina to go with Dylan Eskew for the third straight weekend. I’m not sure who Missouri will go with. But I would have to assume it would have been Roustad if he didn’t pitch Saturday. So in a way, the Gamecocks kind of caught a break because that guy is really, really good.

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