Mizzou baseball suffered a series sweep at the hands of possibly the hottest team in College Baseball, the No. 5-ranked Georgia Bulldogs, who sit firmly atop the SEC. Injuries piled up, the Tigers’ arms showed some good, a lot of bad, and the lackluster situational hitting reared its ugly head in Athens for Kerrick Jackson’s group.
The Tigers are now 4-20 in the Southeastern Conference heading into their final two series against strictly SEC opponents, which was not previously the case before the Tigers’
upcoming contest on Tuesday against Arizona State was canceled. This marks the third cancellation of the season for Missouri, two would-be matchups at Taylor Stadium and one in Cape Girardeau.
A pair of three-game sets against Vanderbilt and Texas are all that remain for Mizzou ahead of the SEC tournament, but first, let’s get into what happened in Georgia this past weekend.
FRIDAY
Josh McDevitt, the Tigers starter, showed up to the diamond, pitching like someone who was gung-ho to face top competition on the mound. The same couldn’t be said for the Missouri offense, which was blanked in a 4-0 defeat to the Bulldogs.
“We were awful offensively, all the way around,” Jackson said to the Tiger radio post-game. “We talked about what we wanted to do, we took fastballs, we were late to fastballs. We gotta figure it out, it’s my job to figure it out, and I’m gonna do everything I can to make sure we don’t waste a good pitching performance.”
The performance by McDevitt was nothing short of an outing that gave the Tigers every chance to win. Pitching 6.1 innings, surrendering one run, four hits, striking out six, and allowing zero free passes against a Bulldog offense that led the NCAA in home runs, doubles, and triples coming into the series.
Despite tallying up more hits than Georgia and putting two runners on base on four separate occasions, no runs could be plated. Timeliness wasn’t on the menu throughout this three-game set, and the lack of it continued to have the Tigers by the tail.
After four shutout innings by McDevitt, Georgia opened its scoring with a sacrifice fly by Ryan Black, following up the lead-off triple by Kenny Ishikawa to open the fifth. Two more strikeouts by McDevitt ended the inning and any other threat of a Georgia run.
A scoreless sixth inning and a strikeout to open the seventh were the finale to McDevitt’s appearance, nearly eclipsing 100 pitches. Juan Villareal, the 6-foot-6 left-hander, replaced him and couldn’t escape the inning clean, giving up a solo homer to Michael O’Sbaunghennesy, which cushioned the Bulldogs’ lead to two.
The straw that broke the camel’s back ended up being a follow-up two-run eighth. After three walks by Villareal loaded up the bases, a two-run single by Black extended the Bulldogs’ lead to four, and a 1-2-3 top half of the ninth concluded a quiet night for the Tigers’ offense.
“You can’t ask for anything more for [From Josh] for facing one of the top offenses in the country,” Jackson said. “He comes out and does his job, and we can’t scratch any runs across, it’s not acceptable.”
SATURDAY
Left‑hander Brady Kehlenbrink made his 12th start of the season and opened the first inning without trouble. Missouri showed early life in the second when Jase Woita and Mateo Serna reached scoring position with one out, though the inning stalled with a strikeout and a groundout.
That missed chance felt trepidatious for Missouri, and Georgia immediately corroborated that concern in the bottom half. A two‑run double into left put the Bulldogs on the board, and Kehlenbrink closed the inning with a flyout and two strikeouts.
The third inning began with Tre Phelps driving a solo homer to left for a 3–0 lead. Missouri loaded the bases in the fourth, only to see the inning end on consecutive strikeouts. Georgia added a sacrifice fly in the bottom half to make it 4–0, a sequence that triangulated the early story of the game: Missouri had chances, Georgia cashed theirs in.
Missouri finally broke through in the fifth when Kam Durnin turned on a pitch and sent a 365‑foot solo homer to left. Right‑hander Trey Lawrence entered for the bottom half and delivered a scoreless inning with two strikeouts. Donovan Jordan opened the sixth with a 393‑foot solo shot to left, trimming the deficit to 4–2 and giving Missouri a brief spark.
Georgia answered in its half of the sixth. An infield error put the leadoff man aboard, and Ryan Wynn followed with his third double of the game to bring in a run. The Bulldogs loaded the bases later in the inning, and a hit‑by‑pitch forced in another. Missouri turned a 6‑4‑3 double play to end the frame with the score at 6–2.
Woita opened the seventh with a 107‑mph, 409‑foot homer to left, his 11th of the season. Georgia responded with its biggest inning of the day.
A string of singles and a walk loaded the bases, and Brennan Hudson delivered a two‑run hit as part of a five‑run frame that pushed the lead to 11–3. The inning had an almost unemotional, unimpeachable efficiency to it — every ball in play found space.
Left‑hander Isaiah Salas and right‑hander Luke Fricker handled the final 1.2 innings for Missouri. Georgia added two more in the eighth, and Hudson’s two‑out single into center brought home the final pair to end the game 13–3 in eight innings. As the Bulldogs walked off the field, the scoreboard served as the lone arbiter of a game where Missouri’s early missed chances were fully corroborated by the final margin.
SUNDAY
Right‑hander Keyler Gonzalez made his first start as a Tiger and worked a scoreless first inning. Georgia struck in the second when Ryan Black lifted a two‑run homer to left.
The third inning became the defining stretch of the game. Fernando Lujo opened with a single, Corey Jackson drew a walk, and Charlie Calloway followed by driving a three‑run homer to right. Another walk and a single kept the inning alive, and with two outs, Phelps stepped in and launched a three‑run homer to left. Seven runs crossed in the inning, and Georgia moved ahead 9–0. The stanza had an emasculating feel for Missouri’s pitching staff, not in bravado, but in how quickly the Bulldogs seized control.
Missouri answered in the fourth. Durnin led off with a 386‑foot solo homer to left, his second straight game with a home run. Three straight Tigers reached after that, and Jordan punched a single through the left side to bring in a run and make it 9–2. For a moment, the Tigers showed introspection in their approach, stringing together quality swings.
Georgia responded in the bottom half, two runners aboard, Kolby Branch connected for a three‑run homer to left. Another run later in the inning pushed the lead to 13–2. Georgia added one more in the fifth to reach 14–2. The Bulldogs’ offense, corroborated by both the box score and the eye test, left little room for discourse about who controlled the game.
Durnin returned to the plate in the sixth and sent his second homer of the day out to left, a 391‑foot shot that marked his third home run in a five‑at‑bat stretch. Left‑hander Kadden Drew entered for the bottom half and worked a scoreless inning.
Missouri added one more in the seventh. Tyler Macon beat out an infield single with two outs, and Woita followed with a double down the left‑field line to bring him home. Georgia recorded the final out, and the game ended 14–4 in seven innings.
As the series closed, one line from the AFI list fit the weekend’s tone: “Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.” Missouri lived that reality across two run‑rule losses, each one shaped by a single Georgia inning that triangulated the outcome long before the final outs were recorded.
THE INJURY REPORT TALLY INCREASES
Right before the series, freshman catcher Juliomar Campos, who’s shown good flashes of offense throughout the season with a .286 batting average was on the doubtful portion of the list, then downgraded to out for the second and third contests.
Then, the pair of outfielders, Kaden Peer and Isaiah Frost were both added to the out tally on the injury report ahead of the series finale, Peer having played in the first two games of the series, Frost the series opener.
Peer and Frost, having started 34 and 16 games, respectively, will both be missed in the outfield lineup, given the outfield depth Mizzou has built this season, after an injury-riddled 2025 campaign forced Jackson to overuse pitching arms and play position players out of their natural areas.
The names of right-handed pitcher Ben Smith, Gehrig Goldbeck, and Chris Patterson have not left the report in quite some time, and with starters Javyn Pimental and JD Dohrmann having brief returns, then back on the report in recent weeks, the injury bug has hit the Tigers in the final stretch of the derby.
Jackson commented on the injuries to Pimental and Patterson post-game after the Tigers’ 6-1 victory over Arkansas on Apr. 25
“Chris Patterson, it is probably unlikely that we’ll see him this year just with the nature of the surgery and then once he gets the pins out of his finger,” Jackson said. “Javyn, just kind of play it day to day when what he’s going through can get a little better.”
UP NEXT
The last two seasons, Mizzou has gotten an SEC sweep and they will have two more chances to do so, but one more to do that specifically in front of their home crowd, this upcoming Thursday-Saturday against the Vanderbilt Commodores. The Tigers have not fared well, home or away historically against Vandy with an all-time 5-30 record and their last victory coming against the Commodores on April 7 2023.
Vanderbilt is also coming off the tough end of a sweep on the road against Alabama, one that effectively ended its chances of making the NCAA tournament.
