Three Strikes: Ole Miss Surges Into Top 10

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Three Strikes is a weekly deeper dive into some of college baseball’s most intriguing stories. This week’s edition focuses on the hot starts of Mississippi and Portland, as well as an early look at which conferences are playing the best in nonconference action.

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Strike One: Ole Miss Breaks into Top 10 Thanks to Pitching, Power

An inexperienced team with a number of question marks, Mississippi began the season outside of the Top 25. Three weeks later, the Rebels are 11-1 and inside the top 10, at No. 9, thanks to outstanding frontline pitching and a power-hitting offense that is second in the country in home runs (21). 

Some of that power has come from the expected sources. Third baseman Tyler Keenan, the top returning power hitter in the lineup, has three home runs after hitting 15 last season. 

It’s also no big surprise to see first baseman Cael Baker tied for the team lead with four homers. At 6-foot, 260 pounds, Baker strikes an imposing figure in the box, and he is coming off of winning the junior college triple crown in 2019. Fellow junior college transfer Hayden Leatherwood has three home runs after establishing a track record as an impressive power hitter at Northwest Mississippi JC as well. 

But what you might not have expected to see is shortstop Anthony Servideo tied with Baker for the team lead in homers with four, to say nothing of him leading the team in hitting, at well over .400. 

His previous career high in homers were the three he hit last season, and to this point of his career, he’s been more of a typical table-setter and less of a power source. But perhaps Servideo’s maturity and belief in his own ability has that changing before our eyes. 

“I’ve grown up, gained that confidence in myself and my abilities knowing that I can play at this level every day,” Servideo said. 

Servideo’s maturity at the plate was on display last weekend against High Point in the opener of the Keith LeClair Classic in Greenville, N.C. 

He went into that game riding high, having come out of a series with Xavier hitting .500 and in the midst of the hottest stretch of his career. Against pitching that he knew wouldn’t overmatch him, it would have been easy to expand the zone to try to keep things rolling. 

But instead, Servideo took three walks, to go along with a single, and scored three runs. 

“It just shows the maturity,” coach Mike Bianco said. “Not a lot of guys can do that, especially when you’re hitting close to .500 and you’ve got four home runs on the year. We haven’t given him many takes, we’ve just let him go, and it just shows the maturity that he’ll take the pitches out of the zone and get on base.”

Highlighting the power production is not to say that Ole Miss boasts a finished product of an offense, at least not yet. 

The Rebels are hitting .251 as a team, with no regular with more than seven starts, aside from Servideo and Keenan, hitting better than .256. Several players who got off to hot starts, including Baker (.194/.340/.556) and freshman infielder Peyton Chatagnier (.256/.412/.410), have cooled considerably. Freshman catcher Hayden Dunhurst has connected for three home runs, but he’s still hitting under .200. 

What some of that uncertainty has allowed for, though, is mixing and matching to find the right combinations. Twelve different players have started five or more games and just about all of them have had a shining moment or two already. Eventually, you figure that type of depth will pay off.

“We’re still trying to figure out who we are, and a lot of teams are,” Bianco said. “I don’t think that’s just youth. It’s early in the season. We lost the entire outfield from last year, and so we’re doing a little mixing and matching, a little platooning, but it’s really more because it’s fluid and we’re trying to figure out what’s our best nine.”

The pitching was more of a certainty coming into the season. There were high hopes that a rotation led by lefthander Doug Nikhazy (2-1, 3.18) and righthander Gunnar Hoglund (2-0, 1.56) would be excellent, and so far, they’ve lived up to that. 

Nikhazy is simply backing up what he did last year, when he proved to be an SEC-quality starting pitcher as a freshman. Two weekends ago, in fact, he threw six hitless frames against Xavier as part of a combined no-hitter. Hoglund, after putting up a 5.29 ERA last season and struggling to go deep into games with consistency, had more to prove. 

Against East Carolina last Saturday, Hoglund battled a tough Pirates lineup and cold, windy conditions, all without his best stuff, on the way to throwing six innings, giving up five hits and one unearned run with no walks and eight strikeouts. 

Hoglund only threw at least six innings in a start three times last season, so to do it on a day like that is good evidence of a pitcher making strides. He didn’t cruise, but instead, battled. 

“Baseball is all about grit,” Hoglund said. “We talk about that all the time. That’s a huge talking point for Coach (Bianco) for us as a team.”

The bullpen has also answered the call, led by righthanders Max Cioffi (0.00, 5 IP), Taylor Broadway (0.68, 13.1 IP), Braden Forsyth (1.50, 4 SV) and Austin Miller (2.79, 9.2 IP). 

Add it all together and it’s a team that seems ahead of schedule for where expectations were before the season, given the inexperience. 

Already, with a series win against Louisville, a midweek win against Southern Mississippi and now a win at ECU, Ole Miss has captured four wins against teams that in the preseason were projected to be in the field of 64, plus Indiana, which has probably played its way into the next projection.

If the SEC teaches you anything, it’s that there will always be trying times in the thick of conference play, but for right now, this has the look of an Ole Miss team that has grown up quickly. 

“You get tests throughout the year, (and) the younger that you are, those tests start flying at you quickly,” Bianco said. “Of course, we had a great first weekend, but a lot of close games against Louisville, and then this team’s been in it a little bit – extra innings, now on the road – and so they keep checking the boxes, and that’s a good thing.”

Strike Two: Lucky Bounce Highlights Hot Start for Portland

Last Saturday afternoon, Portland won a game against Stephen F. Austin in unique fashion. 

After scoring four runs in the bottom of the eighth to tie the game 7-7, the Pilots loaded the bases in the bottom of the ninth with one out. Catcher Nich Klemp hit a ground ball that looked off the bat like a tailor-made double play. Instead, on the way to the glove of SFA shortstop Carson Clowers, the ball caromed off of the umpire stationed behind the mound, allowing the winning run to score from third.

For the Lumberjacks, it was a bad break that cost them a game, but for Portland coach Geoff Loomis, it felt more like an instance of the game of baseball evening itself out. 

“I’ll tell you what’s crazy is it happened to me once on the other side,” Loomis said. “So I knew the rule. That’s what was crazy about it. At my prior job (Division III Pacific Lutheran), we got walked off on the same exact play, and I had the same exact feelings that their coach had.”

They say when you’re playing well, you seem to get all the breaks along the way, and Portland is undoubtedly playing well. That win pushed its record to 8-1. After finishing off a four-game sweep the next day, it moved to 10-1, and after a win Tuesday against Washington, it’s sitting at 11-1. 

The numbers for Portland so far this season have been eye-popping all around, but at its core, the Pilots are a pitching and defense outfit. After the win over Washington, the team ERA is 2.25 and they’re fielding at a .982 clip. 

“We’ve been talking about it for four years, to be really honest with you, it’s pitching and defense,” Loomis said. “When I took the program over, that’s the thing I was trying to really instill in our guys and we feel like this year we’ve got a team that can play defense at an elite level and our pitchers, I think as a staff we’re really deep in terms of guys that can throw strikes.”

Led by righthander Brett Gillis (0.00, 7 IP), Peter Allegro (0.00, 11 IP) and senior closer Connor Knutson (0.00, 7.2, 3 SV), the bullpen has been outstanding, and righthander Christian Peters (3-0, 0.43) has made the move from trusted reliever to frontline ace with aplomb. 

The coaching staff’s confidence in Peters as a potential weekend starter actually came out of last season. Peters made a late-season midweek start against Oregon State and didn’t look out of place against a Pac-12 foe, throwing five innings, giving up two hits and one run. 

“It was the first time we’d ever really started him,” Loomis said. “He’d been a really important piece in our bullpen, pitching in front of Knutson, who’s been our closer. It was one of those Tuesday deals where we had to find somebody to throw some innings, and he hadn’t thrown the week before, so we let him start and he was just cruising. It was an eye-opener in terms of what he could do.”

The offense, meanwhile, has been running just as hot, hitting .303/.385/.518, led by the top three players in the order – outfielder Jake Holcroft (.532/.549/.809), shortstop Chad Stevens (.320/.404/.540) and first baseman Tracye Tammaro (.356/.455/.822, 6 HR). 

Stevens, as a 6-foot-4 shortstop who can handle the position well and swing the bat, is an intriguing prospect for the 2020 draft, in addition to being a key piece of the puzzle for the Pilots. 

“He’s a leader for us, he’s an incredible student at school, which at a place like University of Portland, we really appreciate that. We’ve got to recruit a certain type of student-athlete,” Loomis said. “In terms of baseball stuff, he’s very skilled. He’s 6-foot-4, 210 pounds. He’s really grown and matured since he arrived on campus and has gotten so much stronger. He’s a tall shortstop, but he’s made one error on the season so far. He’s just a really solid shortstop with a really good arm, so he can play the ball in the hole really well. He moves really well, has a good first step.”

All of their success is made more impressive by the fact that the Pilots have yet to play a home game. Well, they’ve technically played home games, but none of those games have taken place in their home park, Joe Etzel Field, which is undergoing renovations. 

Instead, they’ve played “home” games in Ridgefield, Wash., and Hillsboro, Ore., so far, and in two weekends, they’ll host San Diego to open up West Coast Conference play in Corvallis, Ore. 

Later in the season, they’ll actually host games at Joe Etzel Field, but the construction there will still be ongoing. 

All of this might be an inconvenience, but Portland doesn’t think of it that way. 

“Our guys are really focused in a good way on the positive side of this and not thinking about it so much as we’re on the road all the time. They’re focused on the positive side, and even for our senior guys, they’re very selfless. Their focus is on the program and that the stadium is going to make our program better.”

The Pilots have chosen to think of the situation as the cost of turning their home facility into something state-of-the-art and fitting of the kind of program they want to be. And based on what we’ve seen so far in 2020, what they want to be are winners. 

Strike Three: Checking in on Conference Performance in Non-Conference Play

After the third weekend of the season is a good time to check in on the performance of specific conferences in non-conference play. 

With the ACC beginning conference play in week four, the period of time when all major conferences are exclusively in non-conference play is over, and most of those same leagues will be into league play in the next two weekends. 

Just examining the top 10 conferences in RPI from 2019, here is the breakdown of how teams in these leagues are performing, for all games through Tuesday, March 3, in order of winning percentage. 

Conference	Wins	Losses	Winning Percentage
SEC	134	40	.770
ACC	118	41	.742
Big 12	76	33	.697
American	63	39	.618
West Coast	71	50	.587
Sun Belt	84	62	.575
Pac-12	70	55	.560
Big Ten	71	59	.546
Mountain West	39	49	.443
Missouri Valley	39	51	.433

It’s important to take this data for what it is. It won’t tell you everything there is to know about conference strength, given that schedule strength varies from league to league, as does the percentage of home versus road games. 

And while there are some things you didn’t need a data table to know, such as the SEC and ACC being the two strongest leagues in the country, you can use this data to make some inferences elsewhere.

For example, it suggests that the Big Ten is likely in for another strong season when you consider that it has won as many games as it has while playing almost exclusively on the road or at neutral sites. 

What the WCC is doing so far also seems notable. In the past, the top of the conference has been strong, but a handful of teams with poor records at the bottom of the standings served as an anchor on the RPI, and in turn, on the number of teams it could expect to get into the Field of 64. 

It’s still early, but that seems like a much less likely outcome this season. Teams like Portland and Santa Clara, which have traditionally finished near the bottom of the league, are two of the better performers so far. Meanwhile, the bottom of the standings currently feature teams like Gonzaga, Saint Mary’s and Loyola Marymount, which have all played difficult schedules and project to be in much better shape come May. 

Especially when it comes to conferences that can’t just lean on good conference records to buoy at-large candidacies, non-conference performance is a good sign of that league’s ability to compete for at-large bids, and several are headed in the right direction already.