Ole Miss’ Rebuilt Pitching Staff Starting To Round Into Form

Image credit: Ole Miss lefthander Doug Nikhazy (Courtesy of Ole Miss)

When you lose all three members of your weekend rotation, as Mississippi did with Ryan Rolison, Brady Feigl and James McArthur moving on to pro ball after last season, you expect to have to do some rebuilding the next year. And, maybe, you expect to spend some time mixing and matching before eventually, and hopefully, finding the right combination.

Throughout the first third of the season, even as they’ve continued to win series, the Rebels were doing just that, searching for the right mix in the rotation.

But now, with junior righthander Will Ethridge leading the way on Fridays, freshman lefthander Doug Nikhazy emerging as a steady option on Saturdays and freshman righthander Gunnar Hoglund manning the Sunday role, they just might have hit on the right combination.

Last Saturday, in a 3-0 win at Missouri, Nikhazy was untouchable. He didn’t allow a hit until the seventh inning, when Chris Cornelius singled on a sharp liner off the glove of third baseman Tyler Keenan, and he finished his day having given up just two hits and two walks in 7.2 innings.

It was Nikhazy’s debut as a weekend starter, and it couldn’t have gone much better.

“We didn’t know if we would get this, but we knew we would get that kind of effort,” Ole Miss coach Mike Bianco said. “(He’s) a guy that can handle this and handle the Southeastern Conference. Just a really good competitor.”

Whether it’s because he was able to masterfully locate all of his pitches for his entire outing, alternating dotting fastballs on both sides of the plate with burying a sharp breaking ball for swings and misses, or just because his long hair and demeanor on the mound gives him that stereotypical laid-back lefty vibe, Nikhazy never once looked uncomfortable.

He said the root of his confidence is the competition he faced growing up in Central Florida.

“Just high school competition, and even at a young age, me and Gunnar played on a travel team together, and being able to just compete every single weekend,” Nikhazy said. “That, and I just get a lot of confidence from my teammates and the defense.”

And there were opportunities for him to be made uncomfortable throughout the start. The most obvious spot was after losing the no-hitter. It’s human nature to be a little bit disappointed after something like that, especially on a hit that wasn’t the cleanest hit. But instead of dwelling and letting the inning spiral on him, he came back and, one pitch later, started a double play to get out of the inning.

“I just tried tried to flush it,” Nikhazy said. “That’s another thing that Coach Bianco and Coach (Carl) Lafferty work a lot on is being able to flush it, thinking if something bad happens, that your first thought needs to just be good and go after him and still get the next guy. Don’t lose focus under any circumstances.”

It’s just one start, but it’s good evidence to suggest that Nikhazy is the right guy for the Saturday starter’s spot, which has been troublesome for the Rebels this season.

Three of the five losses No. 22 Ole Miss (17-8) has suffered in weekend games this season have come on Saturdays, and they’ve cycled through a couple of different pitchers in that spot in lefthander Zack Phillips and righthander Houston Roth.

The Rebels really haven’t had any such issues on Friday thanks to the presence of junior righthander Will Ethridge.

In the series opener at Missouri, albeit in a 2-1 loss, Ethridge scattered eight hits on the way to allowing just two runs (one earned) in 5.2 innings of work. He’s 4-1, 0.71 ERA and is proving capable of fronting an SEC rotation.

Ethridge has been a key piece in the Ole Miss bullpen each of the last two years, appearing in 45 games (41 in relief), but being an effective reliever doesn’t always translate into becoming an effective weekend starter, much less a Friday starter.

“It’s one thing to become one of the starters, but to match up against the other team’s ace (is another),” Bianco said. “He’s been terrific. He missed a start the second weekend because of a blister, but he’s been lights out and been every part of what you would want and hope (to get out) of an ace.”

The positive steps from this pitching staff aren’t limited to the starting rotation, as closer Parker Caracci has also been a bright spot of late.

One of the real out-of-nowhere sensations of college baseball in 2018, Caracci, a Preseason All-American, got off to a slow start this season. He surrendered two earned runs against Tulane in just one-third of an inning, and then he gave up three earned runs in one-third of an inning against Long Beach State. But since then, he has not given up a run in his last 4.2 innings of relief, and in closing out Missouri in the Rebels’ Saturday victory, he was particularly dominant, striking out three of the four batters he faced.

However, as much as things are trending in the right direction in some ways, there are still questions to be answered.

Hoglund, an unsigned supplemental first-round pick and the most heralded member of the Rebels’ 2018 recruiting class, has held down the Sunday spot so far this season.

Suffice it to say that it hasn’t always been smooth sailing for him this season. His first two starts were rocky, and last weekend at Missouri, an eventual 8-5 loss, he lasted just 2.2 innings, having given up three hits and three runs with two walks.

Hoglund has shown flashes of quality, such as in his start against Alabama two weekends ago, when he allowed two hits and a run with eight strikeouts in five innings, but the consistency just hasn’t been there—at least not yet. Overall, he is 1-0, 4.09 with 16 strikeouts and five walks in 22 innings.

The bullpen around Caracci has been solid for much of the season, led by 6-foot-7 righthander Austin Miller (1.17 ERA, 23 IP) and 6-foot-4 righthander Connor Green (2.35 ERA, 15.1 IP), but it also faltered in the Sunday defeat at Missouri, with Green touched up for two runs in two-thirds of an inning and Phillips surrendering two additional runs without recording an out.

So, in some ways, the search for the right pitchers in the right roles continues. But with Ethridge throwing on Fridays, Nikhazy emerging as a viable option on Saturdays, and Caracci back to this vintage form, there are undoubtedly more pieces to the puzzle in place now than before, and that’s no small thing as the Rebels head into the teeth of their SEC schedule.