LSU vs Ole Miss - Crowdsourced weekend preview

Ole Miss is bad this year. Their record is bad, their pitching staff has major issues, their lineup is about 4 deep. But they’re still in the SEC and they’re still on scholarship too. And they don’t like us. They don’t like us for many reasons. We have a history they can only dream of. We’ve had football success since desegregation. We’re not in North Mississippi. Who knows why, those are all good reasons. But they’re going to play hard, and they have guys that can swing the bat.

Of those guys that can swing the bat, three of them have some ties to Louisiana. Ethan Groff is a Tulane transfer, Ethan Lege is a Delgado transfer from Vermillion Parish (otherwise there would be an ‘r’ at the end of his name), and Will Furniss is the son of the second-best LSU hitter in history. Furniss and Lege aren’t tearing it up at the plate currently, but they have talent. Groff has had some pretty good success and when you combine him with the other guys that left Tulane it makes you wonder just how bad Travis Jewett was if he couldn’t win with those guys. The best player on Ole Miss’ team is the perpetually hyped but slightly underwhelming Jacob Gonzalez. He’s extremely good, but never looks quite as good as we’re being told he is. But he’s another Cali infielder with a hearty clutch gene. He will be a first round pick. Kemp Alderman is the leading home run hitter and is second on the team in average. If the team were showing any signs of life, he’d be a POY contender. He hits the ball hard and he recently hopped on the mound and threw the ball hard. Payton Chatagnier is back for his 12th season of mispronouncing his own last name. He’s a guy whose best year was his freshman year and he’s gotten progressively worse since, which is especially tough for him since he’s been playing since Lance Lynn was on the mound.

On the pitching side, they’re struggling. Their top three pitchers by innings have an ERA over 5. We will see all of them this weekend, though one might be the back half of a piggyback with Hunter Elliot, who is returning from injury and is expected to start the Saturday game. Jack Daugherty will be the Friday guy and he’s an okay righty that doesn’t walk a ton of guys but gives up more than a hit an inning with a healthy percentage of XBHs thrown in for good measure. Xavier Rivas is a D2 transfer LHP that really enjoys giving up home runs. JT Quinn is probably the guy that will come in after Elliot, he’s a tall freshman whose best days are clearly ahead of him, because they aren’t right now. We’re going to see more relievers than it makes sense to profile here. Some of them might not be bad.

Despite being one of Skip Bertman’s favorite pupils, it seems Mike Bianco is taking a page out of the Paul Mainieri playbook and completely punting on the post championship season. It remains to be seen if he will publicly admit that he got lazy.

The beer of the week is the Scottish Ale from High Cotton Brewing in Memphis. It’s the geographically closest brewery to Oxford that I’ve had beer from. It’s a nice little stop on the way from Baton Rouge to St Louis and the beer doesn’t suck.

For those in the Baton Rouge media using these posts for your content, at least stop being a bitch and cite me.