Ole Miss baseball completes season sweep of Arkansas State as second half of the season starts

Things are still not all well for the Ole Miss baseball team but after scuffling through the first half of the conference schedule there was a little bit of positive on Tuesday.

Ole Miss managed to complete the season sweep of Arkansas State with a 6-3 win over the Red Wolves in Jonesboro. A little bit of a bounce back after dropping its fifth straight Southeastern Conference series at Mississippi State this past weekend.

Despite the win there were still things to find displeasure about within the game, including the top half of the Ole Miss lineup going a combined 2-for-18 (.111) for two runs batted in and not scoring a run when loading the bases four separate times with less than two outs.

Ole Miss (21-16) continues to have as much of an issue at the plate as the pitching has been the last month, but on Tuesday those that have scuffled the most at the plate were the ones managing to come up with the hits.

The bottom of the order went a combined 9-for-19 (.473) with Peyton Chatagnier going 3-for-5, while John Kramer went 2-for-4 for two RBIs and Ethan Lege went 2-for-3 and a RBI. Nights like that for Chatagnier who raised his batting average up to .265 could serve as a confidence booster heading into the weekend against No. 1 LSU.

“It was a tough night to swing it,” said Ole Miss head coach Mike Bianco. “We hit some hard balls in the wind and the wind’s part of it. Lege, Chatagnier, some guys had some big nights for us. As coaches you’re disappointed because you felt like you left too many runs out there.

“Lege, Chatagnier, to get those guys going is good for us. (Anthony) Calarco had a couple hits as well.”

Ole Miss starting the second half of its SEC schedule this weekend the offense that was dominant up to mid-March must return.

The top three hitters in the lineup cannot go a combined 0-for-13 like Ethan Groff, Jacob Gonzalez and Calvin Harris did against Red Wolves pitchers.

The LSU lineup is a little banged up but even still much more dominant than the arms Ole Miss saw on Tuesday in Jonesboro. A lot can be said about the pitching causing the Rebels to be 3-12 in the SEC but the offense is just as much responsible in key moments of the first 15 games.

There is not a game in recent weeks, against strong competition, where the entire lineup was strong one through nine in a game. Either the top half is carrying the load, the bottom half has a strong game or neither half is good.

Ole Miss left 13 runners on base and went 5-for-17 with runners in scoring position. With the bases loaded the Rebels went 0-for-5. The two out magic at the plate was not there on Tuesday with Ole Miss going 0-for-8.

“It’s always good to win but disappointed in the way we played tonight,” Bianco said. “I thought, defensively, we had some miscues that gave up some runs and offensively on a tough night to score, a night where the wind’s really blowing hard in from center field, runs were going to be at a premium. It wasn’t just the lack of hits, I thought we had plenty of hits. We just didn’t take advantage of too many base runners. …We could’ve made it a lot easier on ourselves.”

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