As a writer for a prestigious outlet like Red Cup Rebellion, people come up to me on the street, often with tears in their eyes, and say, “Sir, please give us the stats that are going to grind out gears.”
And, as someone who’s here to serve, I have no choice but to give the people, some of whom are top generals, what they want. What better time to grant these requests than right after Ole Miss completed their third SEC series, which means they’re slightly less than a third of the way through the conference
regular season.
Yesterday, One Man To Beat brought you his midseason report card, but I’m going to stick with SEC-only stats through the 9 games involved in the first 3 conference series. As you might expect, the offensive numbers are pretty grim, but the pitching has not covered itself in glory.
Offensive Numbers
Before we dive into the grim, here’s another not-fun-thing to review. Since Ole Miss completed the sweep of Evansville on March 8th, they’ve played:
- Southern Miss
- Texas (x3)
- Austin Peay
- Kentucky (x3)
- Memphis
- Mississippi State (x3)
Their record over those games is 4-8, which is all kinds of gross. Even more grotesque, they’ve scored 1, 9, 2, 2, 9, 5, 1, 12, 2, 4, 1, and 1 runs in those games, respectively. That’s 4.08 runs per game and 4.11 runs per SEC game.
Even worse, if you take out their 12 runs against Kentucky (Game 3) and 9 runs against Texas (Game 1), they’ve scored 16 runs in the other 7 SEC games (2.28/game), which is a great way to have a 3-6 conference record. In fact, to channel the manager from Bull Durham, “How did they ever win three?”
Here are Ole Miss’ SEC-only ranks in the categories below:
- Runs – 13th
- Home runs – 9th
- Slugging percentage – 14th
- On-base percentage – 11th
- Total bases – 14th
- Strikeouts – 15th (2nd most)
That’s 103 strikeouts to 38 walks (2.7 to 1). BUDDY.
While I don’t put a lot of stock in batting average, Ole Miss hitting .210, which is good for 15th in the conference.
For a loose comparison, former Atlanta Brave cult hero Rafael Belliard ended his major league career with a .221 batting average. So Ole Miss is sending up a team of hitters slightly worse at getting hits than Rafael Belliard.
DOUBLE BUDDY.
Because now you may be thinking about Belliard’s excellent fielding abilities, Ole Miss is also in a three-way tie for 13th in the conference in total errors.
Before we get to the pitching numbers, we should note that none of those will matter unless Ole Miss gets better on offense. They can’t string together any conference wins if they can’t score more than 4.11 runs per game.
This offense is a wasteland reliant on hitting dingers, which they don’t do that well.
Pitching Numbers
Through 9 games, it’s been a range of pretty good to mediocre t0 not great.
As for the starters, Hunter Elliott hasn’t been elite on Friday nights, but he’s done enough to win games with a competent offense. Cade Townsend is still a TBD (due to injury), and Wil Libbert has been a mess, lost his starting spot, and may not even have a role out of the bullpen.
Speaking of the bullpen, Walker Hooks and Taylor Rabe have been the best of the bunch, and then it’s a lot of who knows. Hudson Calhoun has looked good for stretches as a substitute starter, but inconsistency is the theme for the bullpen group as a whole.
Here are Ole Miss’ SEC-only ranks in the categories below:
- Earned runs allowed – 8th
- ERA – 8th
- Strikeouts – 4th
- Walks – 8th
- Hits allowed – 11th
- Home runs allowed – 11th
- Batting average allowed – 10th*
*Since the SEC is too lazy to give us on-base percentage and slugging percentage allowed, we have to bring this into play here.
This group needs to be better, but again, even if they possess the ability to get better and do it, their improvements won’t matter with a bad offense.
If there is good news, it’s that there are 21 games left in conference play, which means pulling out of this nose dive is possible. It’s probably not likely, but a 12-9 finish the rest of the way in conference play is not a ridiculous hill to climb.
