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FINAL: MSU 4, Ole Miss 0
Not a stunning result here, because Chris Stratton is one of the best in the league, and the Rebels were simply unable to string hits together. THey had just five on the night as Stratton threw a complete game.
Alex Yarbrough extended his hitting streak to 21 games and had three of the Rebels' five hits, one a double.
Three times Yarbrough reached base, and Matt Snyder, the Rebels' other hot hitter, couldn't get him home. In the fourth Snyder advanced Yarbrough to third with a ground ball, and that was as close as Ole Miss came to scoring.
Snyder went 0-for-4 and grounded into both double plays turned by MSU.
Bobby Wahl pitched good enough to win on an evening with average run support. His six-inning outing was his longest since going eight innings against Florida on March 30. He left at 110 pitches, giving up three runs, only one earned, on four hits.
Postgame comments below:
WAHL
I felt fine. The past few starts there has been a little arm thing going on. It was kind of dead for a while, and I worked through it. I'm starting to feel a lot better. I just couldn't get the job done for the team tonight.
Nothing you can do about it. You have to realize he's a great pitcher over there, and you have to continue to do your job. For the most part I did, but didn't get it done for the team.
I didn't execute the pitches at the right time. I walked guy, then there was a little bleeder. Sometimes it snowballs on you. That's baseball.
You have to continue to battle for the team and hopefully the bats will come through. You have to continue to battle for those guys in there.
YARBROUGH
(Stratton?) He was throwing all three pitches around the zone all night, and all three are really plus pitches, his fastball has great life on it, the change-up too, especially to lefties, and that slider, he was all around the zone with it all night, and it has great late action, especially to righties. I swung and missed it twice when he threw it at the back foot there.
He's made great strides. I got to hit off him last year, and then in the summer in the Cape. He's a completely new pitcher. He's made great strides, and he might be the best we've faced this year.
(Early swings in the count?) You have to stay aggressive. We put some good swings on him, but we made a lot of outs on pitches early in the count. There's not a lot you can do about that. You have to stay aggressive, especially with a guy who's around the zone all night like that.
(Tomorrow?)
I don't know if there's added pressure. We have to come out and take every game the same way. We have to be the ones to deliver the first blow. We can't hang around to the fourth or fifth inning to make stuff happen. We have to get on the board early and make stuff happen offensively.
BIANCO
Stratton was tremendous tonight. He gave us very little if any opportunities to do much offensively.
We had a shot in the first when he struck out Yarbs, which doesn't happen much, and then he gets Snyder to strike out. After that we really didn't have too many opportunities until the ninth. He really dominated, had three pitches in the strike zone.
I thought Bobby was really good himself. They were very opportunistic with the few hits they had. They took advantage of a couple of fielding errors we had.
(Stratton?) He's got excellent command with three pitches. You can sit and take and fall behind, or you can get some swings. We went after him and tried to swing, but we just couldn't barrel any balls up.
***
About an hour and a half to first pitch here.
Here's one from the Daily Journal Way Back Machine. A couple of years ago Brad and I did a story on the Mike Bianco-John Cohen rivalry which extends far beyond MSU and Ole Miss.
And I'm wondering what the pre-game topic was in this chat. Dugout Talk.
Moving ahead ...
I'll have updates on Twitter and will be back here after the game. Will Jamison gets the start in RF tonight.
LINEUPS
MSU
SS Adam Frazier .350
C Mitch Slauter .232
DH Trey Porter .281
3B Daryl Norris .326
CF C.T. Bradford .276
1B Wes Rea .280
RF Hunter Renfroe .257
LF Tyler Fullerton .254
2B Sam Frost .215
P Chris Stratton 7-0, 2.71
Ole Miss
LF Tanner Mathis .346
SS Austin Anderson .234
2B Alex Yarbrough .429
1B Matt Snyder .368
C Will Allen .336
CF Auston Bousfield .283
DH Zach Kirksey .281
3B Andrew Mistone .255
RF Will Jamison .295
P Bobby Wahl 5-0, 2.15