ball5podcast/Miss State Recap/ SEC Tourney

Listen in as Scott recaps the Mississippi State series at Blue Bell Park as well as the upcoming SEC Tournament this week. Scott talks about the in game toughness of the players, and their drive to do well for the team. He also discusses the upcoming SEC tournament and what he feels the Aggies need to do in the tournament to reach the top 8 National Seed against other teams, their RPI, non-conference strength of record and other metrics. Don't miss it. Enjoy!!

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Hey everybody, thanks for joining the Ball Five Podcast. I'm your host, Scott Livingstone, inside the Ball Five Clubhouse. So this episode, I want to talk a little bit about the uh Mississippi State series that we just had at Bluebell Park, as well as a little bit about the SEC Tourney that uh is coming up this next week. Starts tomorrow, I think, for some people. So let's get to the recap. So game one against Mississippi State uh at our place. We lost 18 to 1. It was a little bit of a tough one. Um we jumped out ahead of them. Grahovac and Kopium both hit home runs, I believe, in the bottom of the first. And we jumped ahead two to nothing, and then in the third, they may have done it in the third, but Mississippi State dropped 13 runs on us in the third inning to make it 13 to 2. It was pretty ugly. Got to our pitchers. We ended up using a lot through the whole game. So I don't need to go over too much about that game because that was a rough one. Uh Darden got the start, and he looked pretty good at the beginning, and then things kind of fell apart for him a little bit there. They started hitting the ball, and you know, he's missing some spots and stuff. But that happens. So, you know, it was a tough one. And uh, but it was we we made it a little closer thanks to Mississippi State having a little trouble with the bluebell wind. They dropped some fly balls that should have been caught, but turned into runs for us, so it didn't sound as bad 18 to 11. So that was a tough one. But multi-hit game for us. Uh Grohovac had two. He had a double and a home run. Kopian, home run, as well as a single. Dewar also had a home run in that game with a base hit. Bear had a double and a base hit, and Royo got two hits. So, you know, it was it was a tough one, but the boys are always, you know, they always talk about flushing it and let's bounce back. And so I think that's probably what they were they were looking to do. So I think it's uh I think they did it. I think they got together and they just flushed it. So game two, we ended up winning 11-9. We got 11 runs on 16 hits. Sorell had six RBIs. He was uh single shy of the cycle. He actually hit a high fly ball to the infield, I think right around the pitcher's mound, maybe behind it, that four or five of them were converging on, and you'd think they weren't gonna make the play, but I wonder what the scorekeeper would have done there. Would he have given him a base hit? I've seen some of these balls that drop in suddenly become base hits and doubles, so that probably should be caught. So it would have been interesting to see what would happen there. Uh Sorrell had a first inning home run. That was his 23rd, which plated Gavin Grahovac, who had singled to lead off the game. And after Sorrell's home run, it kind of was went back and forth. Um Mississippi State, you know, they had a couple home runs in the third. They went ahead five to four. In our third, Benderup hit a bomb for three RBIs, made it seven to five us. Grahovac Homer made it eight to five us. That may have been his 19th, maybe 20. I'm not exactly sure. I know he's right in there somewhere. Uh Mississipp State hit another two-run homer. I mean, you kind of see a pattern going on here. Uh that made it eight to seven AGs, and then Sorrell doubled in the fifth that scored two more runs, made it 10 to 7. Mississippi State, guess what? Homered made it 10 to 9. Kellner got hit by a pitch with the bases loaded, and that brought in Dewar, uh, who was on third base. And then after that, it everything kind of seemed like it settled down. But these are were two big-time teams going after it. And, you know, good pitching, good hitting. I think we're all just kind of the same. Just kind of like I said about Ole Miss and Auburn. I feel like us uh coupled with Mississippi State kind of built around the same type of teams. Uh, and they slugged a lot better than I thought they would. But freshcorn came in for the 7th, 8th, and 9th and threw, I think, around 50, 50-ish pitches, maybe 54 pitches. I'm not exactly sure. But uh, yeah, he went three innings, two hits, no runs, and five K. So he came in, man, and he just he shut the door. And Sedeo, Sedeo got the win, and Freshcorn, uh, that was his 12th save. So that was pretty pretty cool, right there. That uh he's he's up to 12. That's pretty good. Pretty good job. Uh, game three, the AGs. I mean, I kind of call this a thriller. I mean, it's almost like you you you saw everything, right? And like I said before, these were two heavyweights going at it, man. Just, you know, toe to toe, like you do in the boxing ring and stuff like that. I mean, it was it was back and forth. You weren't sure what's gonna happen, one play was gonna go one way. You you just weren't sure. And uh, so they they just they just were battling it out on the field for game three because this was the series win. And I think both teams knew how important a win was here for the series because we're all kind of battling for that seventh, eighth spot uh for a national seed to be able to host all the way through Supers if we get that far. And Mississippi, I don't know if they're as close as we are, but we're battling, you know, Florida, Florida State. I even saw Nebraska, Southern Miss, and and you know, just some other teams that were battling to try and get that eighth spot, minimum eighth spot. So everybody knew what was at stake, and Mississippi State probably would have jumped in there too if they would have won the game, but we pulled it out seven to six. I mean, we only got seven hits, but guess what? They walked us 13 times. 13. I mean, for a top team to have pitching that walks you 13 times, not a top team, but they are. Uh Darden got the net got the start for us again. He started Thursday and started Saturday. So he uh was fresh. The coaches asked him if he could go, and he said, Yeah, let's do it. So he and he threw pretty well. I think he went into fourth inning. I don't have the numbers here, but uh Lions followed him, and then Cooper Powell came in. Man, he threw two very important innings for us right there in the middle of that game and shut them down, no runs. And then Freshcorn came back in. Um I think he threw two innings, he ended up throwing another 28 pitches. So I think he, you know, he was probably a little tired from the night before, but you know, it's good to see that he can kind of come back and I mean, I'll work three innings and then two innings in back-to-back games, uh, back-to-back days. So that's that's huge for us going down, you know, as we continue to go down this trail here. And we only walked one to their 13. So, and the score was seven to six. So, you know, probably didn't get as big a hit as we could have gotten if we had that many guys being walked, but you know, we struck out seven of them, and like I said, only walked one. And freshcorn, when he came back in, um, I mean, I think he gave up, he gave up a two-run home run, and then the Aggies came back and scored two of their own. Uh Harrison with a base hit, scoring Sorrell and a copian. And then Freshcorn, I think, got his got his legs underneath him and thought, okay, I'm shutting the door right here. And so he shut down the ninth inning. And I mean, he looks really good when he comes in. And uh it's a it's a great arm for us to have there in the bullpen. Of our seven hits, uh Bear and Royo both had doubles, and Bear had a base hit. Sorell had one, Ecopian had two, and Kellner had one with an RBI, and he he had a big one. I mean, all those hits were I mean, you only get seven hits and it's a seven-six ball game. Everything is crucial, everything is important. So, so we won the series two to one. I swear, man, we're like the cardiac kids, man. We can lose that first game, whether it's Friday night or Thursday night, and then come back and win the next two days, or even a doubleheader. So, I mean, our guys know how to flush it, know how to get rid of it, and step it up and come together. And I think that says a lot about the culture, the locker room, the guys, they pull for each other, they don't panic. I mean, you can just tell there's you know, there's there's a lot of love going on around there as far as you know, enjoying each other's company and being around each other and just having a good time. And it's fun when you win. And I think, you know, these guys are super talented and they know it, and they just got to trust themselves and trust their ability and just keep you know plugging along and and doing their thing and just playing their game. And and I you don't see panic. You really don't. I think there's just a you know, a calm confidence that they have, and it's it's really cool to see. And they're just the cardiac kids, man. And like I said, I mean, you saw a little bit in this series. I mean, it like I said, two heavyweights going at it, and I was there every pitch, every inning, every batter, whatever you want to say, I was there for all of it, and it was an exciting series. And the the cool thing about it was seeing so many things happen during the game. I mean, you know, of course, you're gonna see base hits, doubles, triples, home runs, and you know, Bear threw a guy out stealing second base. Uh, I think maybe Sedeo picked a guy off first. They squeezed or safety squeezed, and you know, it's just a little bit of everything happening. Great plays in the outfield, just everything throughout the whole series. You know, Dewar making plays in the outfield, making some good catches out there. I know there's a lot of people hollering for TK in the outfield, and I get that, but with a copian DH in, you know, Dewar doesn't have that DH spot to go to, and you know they're going to use his left-handed bat in the lineup. And, you know, Chestnut, you can't say enough about Chestnut. I mean, the single that brought in a coping in Sorrell for the for the go-ahead runs, he he he got the bunt down to get those guys over uh to second and third. And I mean, he did what he actually came here to do. He came here to steal bases, run fast, and bunt. Not slug home runs. He's here to get the ball on the ground and run. And that's what he did. And heck, man, he almost beat it out. And he makes every play so close there, man. He can pick him up and put him down. But, you know, to sit on the bench for eight, seven, eight innings or something, and then hey, go bunt. Bunts butting's hard, man. It is kind of hard. And he laid down a great bunt and put it on the ground, and the guys read it down, and they got to second and third, and it was huge. And even on, you know, well, first of all, I gotta say, I saw something that I may have seen a couple times, but I saw an umpire go fair foul. You know, he's like, oh, it's fair, no, it's foul, and changed his mind. And I mean, I think I've seen it where you can do that, and I know you can do that, but what do you do about a ball on strike? Can you change your mind? Can you go strike three? No, no, no, wait, wait, wait. That's a ball. You don't ever see a home plate umpire do that. But third base umpire got to make the call. I don't think he checked with the home plate umpire. I just thought he said, but you know, truth be told, I did see Coach Pennington like raise his arms up like it was foul and uh, you know, was holding the runners up. So, and I saw it too, it was foul. And uh, but yeah, but for him to you know just say fair foul, of course, you know, the 12th man got on him like almost every foul ball they called fair or fair ball they called foul. So it was pretty funny. And Nico, we got to see Nico get in the game too, and you know, uh he had a nice uh had a walk, so it was good to see him at the plate and his big walk at the time. And when he walked, TK ran for him. So, you know, it was huge because then TK, I think Nico pinch hit for Jorian, and you know, they're they're all backing each other. Nobody's upset that they got pinch hit for. It's all about the team. So Nico gets the walk, TK pinch runs and he doesn't score, but he goes out to right field for Jorian, and I mean, I swear the guy ran 65, 70 yards to foul ball territory to catch a foul ball, and he caught it. And I mean, the guy ran forever. And I thought it was closer to first base and second base, but they may have been on some sort of shift, and I don't know where they were playing. But I think TK's the only one that gets to that ball at that point, and it was great. I mean, what a time to have him in. And I just think every all the you know, the right levers were pulled by the coaching staff too. So it was it was a great team effort, collective effort by everybody, and it was just a fun series to watch. And I thought it was kind of funny. I don't know if any of you guys have seen the movie uh Hoosiers, the basketball movie from Small Town in Indiana. It kind of reminded me of that during the game because it was kind of funny when you know a copian got on first base after a base hit, and then Farr had his helmet on, Chestnut was out on deck, Nico was out there, Jorian was out there, and uh Coach Early calls a timeout, offensive timeout, a copian comes in, Sorrell comes in, and you know, they're gonna talk strategy because they gotta you know talk about getting the bunt down and all that stuff, and far was ready to go in for a copian. But you don't know. I mean, if it's a close game, one run ball game, they could tie it up. You know, you're gonna want a copian's bat in there for sure. And so I think Farr was in there to pinch run for him just in case, but it was funny because it reminded me of the movie. Because if you remember at the end of the movie, if you haven't seen Hoosiers, you need to go see it. I know my old folks have seen it. It's they're they're in the end the state championship, the basketball game, small town against a big town, big town school, and they have last second shot. Gene Hackman was the coach, he was the actor that was uh portraying the coach. Jimmy Chitwood was the kid's name that didn't miss a shot. This kid was a superstar and made everything he threw up there. And Hackman called them all in for the last second shot, and he said, Hey, they're gonna look for Jimmy to take the last shot. So we're gonna run the picket fence on him, I think that's what it was, and we're gonna have so-and-so, I don't remember the kid's name, take the shot. And you can see the whole, the whole bench kind of go, oh no, you know, and they put their head down, head up, kind of roll their eyes, and Hackman's like, What's wrong? What's wrong? What's the matter? What's the matter? And he looks over at Jimmy, and Jimmy looks around at the huddle, everybody, and goes, I'll make it. And I just, you know, I'm getting goosebumps telling the story because he's like, I'll make it to make it for the championship, to win the championship for this small town school. And I swear when they came in that huddle at third base on uh in front of the dugout, I think it looked to me, and he may not have been doing it, but it looked to me like a copian was maybe pleading his case to stay in the game, and he may not have, he may not have been, but it that's just what popped in my mind where I really felt like knowing that you know a copian is such a dog, man, he he's a bulldog, man. He's he's a grinder, he's gonna get it done, he's gonna play no matter what. I mean, look at the injuries that he has, and he's he was not coming out of that game. And I felt like he looked at Coach Early and said, I'll make it. Like, I'll make it home. I'll make it home on a single. And boom, he did. So I don't know. That was just me thinking like that, and I was thinking, I really hope that that's what kind of happened, but I don't know if it did because I don't know what happened in that huddle, but that's what it reminded me of. And, you know, you're keeping one of your best players in there, you're believing in one of your best players, you're believing what he tells you, and you trust him. And Coach Early trusts his players, and they trust him. So I don't know. I just thought that was cool. So, all right, so let's move on to the SEC tourney. So, based on where we finish third in the SEC, the standings, that makes us a top four to SEC Tourney. So we get two days off, I believe. The quarterfinals, the top four finishers go straight to the quarterfinals. So they play Thursday, Friday, and I believe we play Friday, and we're gonna get the night game. So we don't play for a little while, and you know, we don't know how some teams are gonna handle it. Are they gonna go in and play their play their starters and or or not? We don't know at this point, but I know Coach Early said on TechSags this morning, hey, we're gonna play. You know, we're we're playing to win. Because I mean, I've been there. How how are you gonna I I've been in that situation where you don't need to win this game, but what do you do? Not play or not want to play or not want to hit or not want to compete? No, it's far from it. You want to compete every time. Hitters want to want to keep the the practice going and keep their rhythm going. I mean, you look at how well that we've been we did this weekend, at least hitting the ball sometimes, you know, on the nose. It's like you want to kind of get a feel for that and just keep it going, keep it going, and maybe keep your pitching staff, you know, keep building up their innings, maybe find, you know, another Cooper Powell. He may come in there again. You never know. So you got to play. I I say you play to win, and I think that's what they're gonna do. I'm pretty sure they're gonna do. Um, we will actually play, so LSU and OU play, and the winner of that game plays Auburn. So Auburn gets a date as well, and we will play the winner of that game. And for me, for the you know, honestly, I would really like to play Auburn because I think they're ranked third or fourth in the RPI. I'll I'll have it here in a second. But OU and LSU, I don't know if that really helps us because if we're if we're going for that top eight and we need something to kind of cement us into that top eight to get that national seed all the way to Bluebell Park in the Supers, I think we need to win a game. And if it's Auburn, I mean that would be awesome because if we win that game, then we would play Texas. But people are saying, hey, you're gonna play Texas, and it could be the next rivalry, you know, it'd be a great game. Don't give up on Arkansas, man, because I don't even know how much the, you know, the coach down at the, you know, in Austin down there, I don't know if he really how serious he's gonna take it, knowing they have a top eight already. And he may not throw all of his guys, he may rest some players, I don't know what he'll do, but I don't know if, you know, like I said, if he's gonna play everybody. So we'll just have to wait and see. But I think Auburn would be way better of a competition for us to kind of just help out our uh our place in the RPI, because you know, I I went through here, and so you look at our RPI rankings, and right now we are at 11, and you've got Alabama six, Florida State seven, USC eight, Florida nine, Nebraska, yeah, Nebraska 10. And one school that always kind of sneaks up in there, Southern Miss is 13. So, you know, for the teams that are close, I think Alabama could be a lock. I really think they can be. But we could be battling Alabama, FSU, and Florida, even Nebraska. I mean, there's some schools in there because I've got my locks as UCLA, Georgia Tech, Georgia, Auburn, Texas, and North Carolina. So that leaves me basically with Alabama, Florida State, Florida, and Southern Miss, maybe Nebraska, I don't know, but battling for that top eight. And one thing that I don't know if a lot of people look at is our strength of schedule. Because those schools that we're battling with, Florida, strength of schedule is a two. Ours is 18. Um, Alabama's four. Florida State's five. Of course, Auburn's one, and ours is 18. So looking at that strength of score, I mean, strength, uh, strength of schedule is kind of a metric that they do look at. Another metric that I think that they kind of look at, but maybe not put a ton of emphasis on, is your non-conference strength of schedule. And we kind of get burnt in this because ours is 218. So our non-conference schedule, and of course, that's why I don't put a lot of stock in the numbers and stats for the non-conference stuff, because you know, the strength of schedule, the strengths of the teams that we play, we're at 218 out of what, 307, 306 teams. So it's those conference stats that I look at and start to watch when I start seeing who's really, you know, banging the ball around, who's throwing well. So us being at 218, Florida's non-conference strength of uh schedule is 22. Southern Miss is eight. I mean, if they look at that, Alabama's 24, uh, Florida State's 28. Auburn's one. Uh, they went out and made a schedule for that reason to help them in their ranking and made specifically a non-conference strength of schedule really strong. And they're ranked first as far as that goes. And so that, I mean, they they look at these metrics, right? And if you look at the non-conference RPI, Southern Mist played a heck of a schedule too. Their RPI, the non-scheduled people, are two. Florida State is five, and Auburn's one. So, I mean, there's a lot to be said about who you play, when you played them in the year. And, you know, I don't know if they're gonna do head to head. I think they do look at that because, you know, we beat Florida, but we didn't play Alabama. We haven't played Florida State, but Florida has beaten Florida State. You know, who is Southern Miss? They've beaten some some good teams too. So I don't know. I think it's I think we need to win one game in the tourney. And like I said, I really hope that it's that it's Auburn because I think that's who we need to play. And uh if we can get that win, I think we can get a top eight. And I've said it before, I don't look at a lot of the numbers and stats and stuff as far as like teams and players and where they're ranked fielding, hitting, pitching. You know, I do that for the podcast to tell listeners kind of where these teams sit and how they do and how our players are doing. But I'm a big eye test guy, and that's what I focus on is the eye test. And I've seen every pitch, every game, every at-bat, pretty much everything this year for AM. I've watched their games, I watched the coach early, I've watched his moves, the pitching staff, you know, when they take somebody out, when they put him in, how a guy's swing is, and you know, what's he swinging and missing at? What are these pitchers trying to do to him? When you're at the games, you can't really tell on TV what they're doing. But when you're at the games, you can see everything. And I look for everything. I'm telling you, being a former Major League Baseball player and also a utility guy, being able to play different positions and have to be ready to come off the bench. And when I was a role player, you watch everything, you pay attention to everything that's going on, and you see what's happening. So I'm seeing it from the stands. I've even picked a couple pitches on some pitchers from just sitting in the stands. But it's a situation where I have watched other teams too. Now I've seen teams on TV, I've seen Mississippi State on TV. I was like, oh, you know what? They look pretty good. Saw them in person, saw how they worked, how they went after everything. And man, super. They were they are a super team. But all in all, in my opinion, I believe wholeheartedly that Texas AM is no doubt a top eight team in the country, and maybe top six. You heard it here first. So that's my take on it. And uh the little recap. Uh, I hope you enjoyed it. And that's gonna be it for this episode of the Ball Five Podcast. And uh hope you go over to the Ball Five Clubhouse YouTube channel and check that out. Subscribe uh for some notifications because I drop stuff every now and then, but it's gonna get more and more and more as we get going here throughout the summer and uh the rest of the year. So be sure and check that out. All right, folks, that's it. I appreciate you listening. Until next time.