Mississippi State baseball managed to get a series win over the weekend. While I think it was a solid showing (in two of the three games), there are some who are all in on being doom and gloom.
And I want to be totally clear, it’s actually pretty fair to be doom and gloom with the state of the Mississippi State baseball program. The Bulldogs have been bad for a couple seasons now and they’re off to a 4-4 start on the season.
At worst, this team should probably be 6-2. But hey, that’s not the world we live in right now.
So, let’s go over this past weekend’s Mississippi State baseball series.
The highs, the lows, the whole nine yards. Let’s review it all and provide a nice little grade at the end.
Table of Contents
Starting with the facts of the matter. Let’s take a gander at what happened this game in stereotypical game recap content.
Mississippi State baseball vs. Georgia Southern series recap
Let’s go over what happened this weekend
Game 1: Mississippi State 5 – Georgia Southern 1
Hey, this was absolutely not a bad showing for the Bulldogs. Nate Dohm dominated over 6.2 innings, striking out 10 opposing batters and holding Georgia Southern scoreless. He set the tone for what this weekend could be for the pitching staff.
Mississippi State’s bullpen helped clean things up by providing another five strikeouts from Gavin Black and Brooks Auger. At the plate, Logan Kohler Shined and went 3-4.
And MSU came out on top to the tune of 5-1 in front of 10,649 claimed fans.
Game 2: Georgia Southern 11 – Mississippi State 4
This one wasn’t good. This one was straight up bad. Really bad! And it was bad from the start!
The Mississippi State baseball team really struggled on the mound and in the field in game two, leading to a lopsided home loss. Khal Stephen got 2.1 innings of work in, but he allowed 7 runs to Georgia Southern.
There were a few bright spots in the bullpen as Karson Ligon and Luke Dotson were able to get through the back half of the game without too much of a hassle, but it was an all-around frustrating showing on Saturday as supposedly 12,323 fans saw Mississippi State lose 11-4.
Game 3: Mississippi State 10 – Georgia Southern 2
But hey! Game three was good! Really good. In all the ways that game two was bad, game three was solid.
The Miss. State Bulldogs really bounced back behind excellent pitching and timely hitting to capture the rubber match. Starting pitcher Jurrangelo Cijntje set the tone with 5 strong innings as he struck out 7 batters.
At the plate, Mississippi State managed to get 15 hits and David Mershon went 4-5 with a couple of RBIs. Five Bulldogs ended up with multi-hit days and things looked promising on Sunday as the Bulldogs won 10-2 in front of what MSU said was 9,943 fans.
After that deflating game two loss, this sort of response was important for the Mississippi State baseball team.
High notes and Mississippi State baseball highlights
Look, while there are a lot of folks who will want to focus on what went wrong and why things went wrong, there were several bright spots that came up in the two solid wins the Bulldogs had over Georgia Southern.
Like David Mershon, for example. The dude was thrilling to watch in game three against the Eagles:
And this moment when Bryce Chance made it clear the Bulldogs were there to play on Sunday:
Brooks Auger had several solid moments in his two relief appearances and it seems like he could be a huge asset for the Bulldogs this season.
And speaking of dominant pitching, Nate Dohm was fantastic.
But hey, there are some less-than-fantastic things we need to talk about as well:
Low moments
Game two. There’s nothing really else to say here other than that game was bad. We can’t really dwell on it too much, although it seems likely that folks online are going to focus more on the 7-run loss as opposed to either the 4-run win or the 8-run win.
I don’t know. I’m not claiming to be an expert on anything here. Nor do I care to be a sunshine pumper. Let’s look at the whole thing as it is. And the whole thing is a little nuanced.
But it’s very clear that game two was horrendous. That sort of showing absolutely cannot happen regularly. It has to be an anomaly for the Bulldogs.
Final Thoughts
This was a decent weekend, but it wasn’t great. Not by any stretch of the imagination. Going 2/3 in most series? That’s fine if it’s happening later in the season.
If Chris Lemonis wants this program to be the blue blood that it claims to be, then Mississippi State really can’t afford to be losing to teams like Georgia Southern and those losses really can’t come by a margin of SEVEN RUNS.
Game two was bad. Maybe it was an anomaly. I don’t really know. The sample size is pretty small.
If we’re looking at just this weekend alone, I’m okay with things, but when you factor in how the Bulldogs lost to Austin Peay in back-to-back midweek matchups, then things aren’t really great for where the Bulldogs are right now.
Grading this series alone though? I’ll give the Mississippi State baseball team a 7.5/10. This weekend wasn’t great, but it was decent.
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