Breaking news: The Southern Miss baseball team is in fact human.
The No. 12 Golden Eagles dropped their first series of the season on the road at Arkansas State, marking their first series loss since Marshall last year.
The week began with a walk-off home victory over Ole Miss, but with the two losses up in Jonesboro, Southern Miss ended up with its first 2-2 week of the season.
Below is my weekly grades of the team, and I might warn you they aren’t pretty.
Starting Pitching – B-
For a group that earned an A+ last week, they took a small step backwards this week. Thomas Crabtree opened with a nice start against Ole Miss on Tuesday night, but obviously this grade generally revolves around the weekend rotation.
Here were the starting rotation lines.
C. Allen – 5.0 IP, 6 H, 3 ER, 3 BB, 3 K, 73 TP, 44 ST
G. Harris – 6.0 IP, 6 H, 0 ER, 0 BB, 4 K, 82 TP, 60 ST
M. English – 2.2 IP, 4 H, 0 ER, 2 BB, 3 K, 54 TP, 33 ST
Grayden Harris once again delivered the best start of the weekend in the Golden Eagle’ only win against Arkansas State. His fastball was lethal, and slider played nice off of it. Harris attacked the strike zone, not allowing too many Red Wolves on the base path, and controlled the game from the bump. He’s starting to look more and more like the Friday guy, even Southern Miss head baseball coach Christian Ostrander alluded to that on the SuperTalk Eagle Hour on Monday.
Colby Allen is getting barreled up way more than I thought he would be coming into the season. Even though his outing was fine, it hasn’t looked like Friday night stuff really at all this year. Teams are seeing his stuff well, inducing a lot of long flyouts instead of the general groundouts and strikeouts we are so accustomed to see from Allen. You have to wonder if it’s getting in his head at this point after five outings, where really none of them have been truly “Friday night dominant.” I’m very curious what they do with Allen moving forward.
McCarty English had another fine outing and ran into some insanely bad luck on Sunday where he was out of the inning on four different pitches. Two were errors allowing Red Wolves to score, another was a missed strike three call, and another was a passed ball.
Overall, the Golden Eagles’ starting trio combined to post a 3.95 ERA across 13.2 innings during the week while recording 10 strikeouts and issuing five walks. The rotation was solid overall, but the lack of a shutdown performance outside of Harris kept the grade from climbing higher.
Don’t be surprised to see Harris be the Friday guy against Troy this weekend.
Bullpen – B
Southern Miss’ bullpen once again had a stellar week. Outside of one bad outing on Friday night, the bullpen kept Southern Miss in every game this week despite the hitting performance displayed.
Against Ole Miss on Tuesday…after starter Thomas Crabtree exited early in the game, the Golden Eagles turned to a group of relievers that combined to hold the Rebels to just one run. Camden Sunstrom, Bruce Littleton, Josh Och and Camden Clark each contributed important innings as Southern Miss held Ole Miss to just three hits in the game. Both being the Rebels low the entire season. In fact, not even No. 1 Texas could hold Ole Miss’ offense down the way the bullpen was able to.
The reason the grade is the lowest I’ve given the bullpen all season, is because one outing cost them a game. Sunstrom’s four earned runs in the Friday game against Arkansas State was shocking. For a guy who has seemed virtually unhittable in the early parts of the season, the Red Wolves jumped all over him.
Put it this way, overall, the bullpen logged approximately 17 innings during the week and posted a 4.15 ERA while recording 23 strikeouts and issuing six walks. Take out Sunstrom’s outing on Friday night, the Southern Miss bullpen was excellent, posting a 2.16 ERA across 16.2 innings with 22 strikeouts and just five walks.
Kros Sivley was excellent in his outing, and Josh Och and Camden Clark did what they do. Overall, the pitching gave up just 10 earned runs all weekend in Jonesboro.
Lineup – D
The Southern Miss offense is the reason the Golden Eagles dropped the series at Arkansas State without a question. The offense showed some flashes at times but struggled to maintain consistent offensive pressure throughout the week.
Across the four games, Southern Miss recorded just 30 hits and struck out 33 times, frequently stalling rallies and limiting scoring opportunities. The Golden Eagles scored just 16 runs during the week and often struggled to string together multiple quality at-bats in the same inning.
It was the Joey Urban show again this week, as he once again was the best bat the Southern Miss had in the lineup. Urban finished the week hitting .313 and has cemented himself as the team’s most consistent offensive performers.
Ben Higdon also had a productive week at the plate, hitting .286 while drawing five walks. Davis Gillespie delivered several key RBIs during the week and added a home run of his own, finishing with five RBIs across the four games.
Despite those three, everyone else in the lineup struggled mightily. Matthew Russo, Tucker Stockman and Drey Barrett combined for 6-40 (.150) from the plate. Then the bottom of the order was just dreadful between Caleb Stelly, Gray Eubanks, Ty Long and Lawson Odom combined for 2-16 (.125).
Southern Miss stranded countless men on the base path, and just were uncompetitive at the plate in most of the games with just 14 walks in four games. That would make the week roughly a 2.36 K/BB ratio.
It was an ugly performance and needs to change.
Defense – C-
Southern Miss’s defense only had one error all week until Sunday’s game, where two routine groundball plays led to three runs for Arkansas State. Because that inherently lost them the game, this grade has to be exceptionally low.
There were still stretches where the Golden Eagles played clean defense, turning double plays and making several routine plays without issue. However, the miscues that did occur proved costly enough to impact the overall grade.
Cleaning up those mistakes will be critical moving forward, especially as the competition within the Sun Belt continues to intensify.
Overall – C-
If there was any word to describe this week for Southern Miss baseball it would be, inconsistency.
The Golden Eagles opened the week with a strong midweek victory over Ole Miss, but had moments in that game to really blow it open and the offense couldn’t get the big hit.
The Arkansas State series highlighted several areas that still need improvement if this team wants to get where they want to be. The Golden Eagles were unable to consistently generate offense, struggled at times out of the bullpen and committed a few defensive mistakes that allowed the Red Wolves to beat them in a series where Southern Miss clearly the better team.
Southern Miss remains in a strong position early in the season, but the opening conference series served as a reminder that the margin for error becomes smaller once Sun Belt play begins, especially on the road.
Southern Miss will try to bounce back with a game against Nicholls tomorrow night and a weekend series against Troy at home.
