How a frustrating, tantalizing team took flight
Ole Miss became the best version of itself when it mattered most
We’ve got a new podcast out with Collin Brister recapping Ole Miss’ run through the Coral Gables regional, how it happened and a quick look at Southern Miss. You can check that out here or anywhere you get podcasts.
We’ve got a lot of baseball to discuss today.
This was unexpected but hardly improbably
I cannot truthfully say that I am shocked Ole Miss still has more baseball to play in the second week of June. But that doesn’t mean I expected it. Because I didn’t. I expected that this content item would discuss short and long-term future of the program and who would be leading it as the Rebels put the bats gloves away for the summer.
When the field of 64 came out last week, and we all received the surprising news that Ole Miss’ season would extend for at least one more week after being the last team awarded a bid, my initial thought was that the Rebels drew one hell of a favorable draw. But did it really matter?
I thought Miami and Arizona were good clubs but that both of them lacked top end pitching. Ole Miss’ kryptonite this season has been just that. The Rebels have struggled to hit upper-tier arms, particular of the left-handed variety. The only two guys who remotely fit that billing on either team were both aces: Miami’s lefty Carson Palmquist and Arizona’s Garrett Irvin. Neither overwhelm opponents with velocity and Ole Miss returned seven of the nine hitters from last year’s lineup that tagged Irvin for seven runs on seven hits as he collected just four outs in game two win in the the 2021 Tucson Super Regional. So, really, assuming Miami held Palmquist against the No. 4 seed Canisius, he was the biggest obstacle standing in the Rebels’ way. That’s a far less daunting path than being sent to Palo Alto to face the stable of arms the No. 2 national seed Stanford boasts — or much of the same in Corvallis with Oregon State.
Ole Miss had a realistic shot to get through this regional based on matchups and talent level, but I did not expect them to do it. Why? Because of all the head-scratching flaws this confounding group displayed for the majority of the regular season — most of which made little sense.
What did we think we knew about this team heading into the season? That it would be one of the best offenses in the country. Wrong. That it would be a pretty good defensive team with the exception of the corner outfield spots. Wrong. That pitching would be what ultimately held them back. Wrong again. There was so much that didn’t make sense about this team. The on-field results reflected that, from instances breath-takingly bad situational hitting to routine defensive gaffes and missed opportunities that stacked high as the season entered its later months.
I didn’t necessarily think Ole Miss could erase a late two-run deficit in a must-win opener against a No. 2 seed like Arizona with a fresh bullpen and a starter that went deep into the game. The Rebels have shown moments of resiliency late in games this year, but entered the Coral Gables regional 0-16 on the season when trailing after six innings. After peppering Irvin a year ago, he looked to be in total control the first time thru the order. Ole Miss got some better swings off the second time thru in the middle innings but had some poor luck. The Rebels got to him the third time through, with the middle-to-bottom of the order no less. That isn’t something that’s happened a lot this year. Chatagnier tied the game at four with a two-run shot and then bailed the Rebels out of what was shaping up to be another situational hitting disaster an inning later with a two-out, double that cleared loaded bases and gave Ole Miss a 7-4 lead its dominant bullpen held onto with ease.
Perhaps my biggest doubt was Ole Miss’ ability to win the type of game it did against Miami — undoubtedly the biggest win of the season — that put it in the driver’s seat of the regional and on the doorstep of heading to the program’s third straight Super Regional. A low-scoring, one-run stalemate. The type of game in which an error, bad at-bat or other slight mishap swings the game and completely changes your postseason outlook. Ole Miss played 18 innings of errorless baseball in their first two wins. It wasn’t perfect, of course. The outfield defense was shaky, but they made plays on the infield that they haven’t made at other points this year. This team found a way to win despite another team’s ace bottling up the offense for the majority of the game.
Ole Miss couldn’t solve Palmquist. The one time the Rebels had him in a vulnerable spot, with runners on second and third base with no outs in the bottom of the sixth inning, another situational hitting catastrophe that almost seemed signature occurred. Palmquist struck out Kevin Graham in a terrible at-bat, before he handed the ball Alex McFarlane who disposed of Kemp Alderman with another strikeout and got Chatagnier to ground out after a Dunhurst walk that loaded the bases. It was an inning that looked like a movie everyone has seen dozens of times throughout this season. It’s a sequence that had become part of this team’s DNA. But unlike at other points in the season, Ole Miss came back with another punch — and actually landed it. The Rebels generated something out of nothing in the seventh inning with a two-out rally that culminated with Tim Elko’s two-run double that proved to be the difference thanks to the bullpen’s repeated dominance.
Lastly, I wasn’t sure that, even if Ole Miss did all those other things, that it would utilize the advantage it had entering Monday. What I mean by that is that the Rebels had a sizable advantage after the Miami win. They got to go to the hotel and rest while Miami and Arizona, both of whom lack pitching depth, played its third game in a span of roughly 24 hours. The advantage was physical rest and pitching rest. But would Ole Miss capitalize on that and put away whoever emerged victorious between those two on Monday? Or would the Rebels let an inferior pitcher making a spot start go six innings of two-run ball, squander the game late and set up a winner-take-all contest set to start roughly 45 minutes after said opportunity was squandered? The former happened. Ole Miss bludgeoned what remained of an undermanned and overmatched Arizona pitching staff — and removed all doubt en route to a historic road regional series win that put it on the precipice of achieving the lofty goals (rightfully) bestowed on this team in the preseason.
My closing point in this part of our conversation is this: I thought this regional was absolutely winnable for a team that seemingly caught a good break from the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee (that it should absolutely not apologize for due to previous precedent). I thought Ole Miss was capable of doing all these things. We all thought that. That’s what made this regular season as baffling as it was maddening to fans. But I, presumably like many of you, was skeptical any of it would come to fruition due to the underwhelming 53-game sample size we had to use to pass judgement.
Certain versions of all of the things Ole Miss did this weekend happened throughout the regular season. The Rebels tattooed Texas A&M ace Nathan Dettemer, one of the better pitchers in the SEC, but ended up losing the game. Ole Miss won a close game on the road at Arkansas with Razorback ace Connor Noland on the mound, but squandered two winnable games after that, mostly due to poor situational hitting. It destroyed poor Missouri pitching to produce a sweep that gave its postseason outlook a glimmer of hope. The Rebels came back in the ninth inning to tie rubber matches at South Carolina and at home against Mississippi State. But this is also the same team that was swept at home by a team that didn’t make the NCAA Tournament in Alabama, failed to take control of the series at a bad South Carolina club at a crucial juncture of the season and couldn’t find a way to win a home series against a Mississippi State team that didn’t make Hoover. None of the things that good baseball teams do, teams that win regionals, happened with enough consistency for anyone to feel confident picking the Rebels to win the Coral Gables regional outside of wishful thinking, fandom or homerism.
But this confusing group finally did all of those things consistently. The pieces all came together, worked cohesively and formed a well-oiled machine ( or, in other words, a good baseball team), and to their everlasting credit, they did it when it mattered the most. Ole Miss is now two wins away from the College World Series less than six weeks removed from leaving Fayetteville, Arkansas with a 7-14 conference record. Ole Miss did just enough to get into the NCAA Tournament and seized the opportunity. The Rebels did just to hang within striking distance against a feisty Arizona team and capitalized on Irvin’s moment of weakness. They did just enough against to hang around despite a troublesome day against a bona fide ace in Plumquist and seized the moment.
In a season of missed opportunity, Ole Miss capitalized on nearly every chance in a crucial moment. Which is why this is a revival more than it is a fortuitous blip, a long-awaited deliverance more than an underdog run. Chase Parham eloquently wrote that it’s a redemption tour of sorts, a journey to rectify an underwhelming regular season.
He’s right.
The reason you all remained invested and held out hope is because the talent and flashes of good allowed to rationally believe it, even if the results made you rightfully doubtful that it would come to fruition.
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So, how did Ole Miss do this?
How did this happen? How is this team two wins away from the College World Series and back in a third consecutive Super Regional? There are a few.
This run was driven by star power
Tomorrows are seldom in June baseball in this strange sport. The postseason is what produces the most consequential moments and the thinnest margin for errors. Teams that succeed almost always are carried by their stars. Ole Miss is no different. Tim Elko went 7-for-9 with 3 home runs, 5 walks and 7 RBIs. He was retired twice in the entire regional. Elko posted close to a 3.000 OPS. He belted three home runs in the finale to put the proverbial nail in the coffin while breaking the single-season home run record (22). Elko proved to be one of the best players in college baseball in 2021 and one hell of a story after an ill-fated first base turn cruelly derailed an All-American-caliber season. In 2022, he cemented himself as one of the greatest hitters in Ole Miss history and became a program legend.
In the game two win over Miami, Elko, Jacob Gonzalez and Justin Bench were the only three players to record hits. Brandon Johnson recorded back-to-back saves. Dylan Delucia struck out 12 and found a way to give Ole Miss six innings despite a pair of early mistakes. Hunter Elliott was nails. The stars fueled the rise.
Make no mistake: Elliott is a star
He delivered one of the most remarkable and tough postseason outings I have seen since I have covered/followed the program. Make no mistake about it, Elliott is a star. As a true freshman, the left-hander took the baseball in the biggest game of the season, one that would swing the Rebels postseason chances more so than any single contest they’d played to that point — teams that go 2-0 in the first two games of a regional win that regional 81 percent of the time — and thrived. Elliott did so without having close to his best stuff. He told reporters after the game that he struggled to find his fastball command or slider. He loaded the bases with one out in the first inning. Instead of surrendering three runs and put Ole Miss in position to chase a game in which runs were at a premium, he induced back-to-back strikeouts to slip out of a jam. That’s sort of become his signature move.
Consider this for a moment. Elliott is a true freshman, with his team’s fate on his shoulders and without feel for two of his pitches, and found a way put together six innings of one-run baseball. He allowed the leadoff man to reach in each of the first four innings but did not allow a single run over that span. Elliott carries himself with a confidence that is similar to program legend he’s often compared to in Doug Nikhazy. I am no longer around the team every day anymore, so I don’t get to hear these guys speak. But Chase told me on our Sunday emergency podcast that Elliott sort of scoffs at questions about gaining confidence as a freshman because, well, he’s always been confident. It’s almost as if he doesn’t understand the question. Nikhazy was the exact same way. He’d look at you with a sense of bewilderment, like he was supposed to be doing this, when you asked. For Elliott to give Ole Miss that kind of outing in that moment, it’s as impressive of a performance as I can recall. His team needed every bit of it.
The strength of this team, the bullpen, dominated
The bullpen is the strength of its baseball team. As far-fetched as that may have seemed in February, it is absolutely an indisputable fact.
The Ole Miss bullpen in the Coral Gables Regional produced this stat line: 12.1 IP, 0 ER, 7 H, 23 K, 3 BB. You think that’ll play? The next postseason earned run that unit allows will be its first. It’s not necessarily coming from who you thought it would have in February.
For as much praise as Hunter Elliott deserves, Mason Nichols’ outing was every bit as vital in the game two win over Miami. He entered in the top of the 6th inning with runners at the corners and no one out. With the way the game was trending and the Hurricanes’ All-American closer Andrew Walters looming in the bullpen, a home run kind of felt insurmountable and two runs felt like a tall hill to climb. Nichols coaxed a fly ball for a sacrifice fly, froze out Zach Levenson for a strikeout and got Gaby Gutierrez to weakly fly out to end the inning. What’s that game look like if two runs score? Who knows. A pair of true freshmen got the game to Johnson with a lead in the biggest spot of the year. Nichols seems unfazed in high-leverage situations and undeterred by inheriting base runners. He’s been a crucial cog in this operation.
Josh Mallitz was the first arm out of the bullpen in a regional. Who had that on their bingo card in February? He put up a pair of stress-free zeroes that allowed Ole Miss to take a lead and bring in Johnson to close it out. Again, this bullpen is being fueled from guys you might not have originally thought would help the ballclub in June. Jack Dougherty’s Monday outing was just his third since the Arkansas series — and he hasn’t been bad.
This bullpen has become the backbone of this team. It, along with DeLucia and Elliott, have taken pressure off an offense that pressed early in the season because of the lack of initial success on the mound. As much uncertainty as there was entering this postseason, isn’t it weird to think about the fact that the most certain thing about this team is its top two starters and the bullpen? I did not have Ole Miss pitching its way through a regional as a preseason prediction, but that is exactly what happened.
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A heart and soul hero emerged
Are we having this conversation right now if Chatagnier doesn’t drive in four runs (really five but an error on the double discounted an RBI) in the Saturday game against Arizona? His two hits single-handedly propelled a sputtering offense to a win. The Rebels were toast if they lost that game. Chatagnier went 7-13 with 10 RBI on the weekend. He has taken a lot of criticism this year, and much of it justified. Chase pointed out in his Saturday story that Chatagnier hit .176 of a 76-at-bat stretch this season. He was benched during the Kentucky series. This is a guy that had appeared in every single game since stepping on campus in 2020 and started all but two.
Chatagnier’s struggles didn’t initially improve upon his re-insertion into the lineup. But he never let that affect his defense or his demeanor. On a team that seemingly lacked outward enthusiasm at times this year, Chatagnier is No. 1 in the ‘give a damn’ power rankings without a close second and is a crucial piece of this team, even with his struggle of a season. He saved Ole Miss when it was on the verge of becoming the next underperforming three seed that faded out of a regional.
Bianco deserves credit in this
This may not be what some want to hear, but Mike Bianco does deserve some credit in all of this. As mystifying as the Derek Diamond Second Time Thru The Batting Order thing is, I still thought he pushed a lot of the right buttons this weekend. He pulled DeLucia at exactly the right time in game one. He went to Johnson despite Mallitz cruising through two frames. While this move was met with some second guessing, I cannot for the life of me understand why. Ole Miss was up 7-4 in the ninth inning of a game it absolutely had to win. Don’t you want your best gun firing the bullets? How many of you would’ve been irate and opening the Rivals app to vent online had Mallitz gone walk, single, bomb to tie the game in five pitches? You’d all be screaming for him to have used Johnson. Also, who has been in more scenarios like that? Mallitz did his job. Bianco let Johnson do his.
I also thought tinkering with the lineup before the regional final against Arizona was both bold and prudent. T.J. McCants isn’t fully healthy and is having a brutal year at the plate. The Rebels were getting next to nothing from Hayden Leatherwood. But those two had been lineup staples for most of the season. Instead of sticking with the status quo despite a glaring weakness at the bottom of the lineup, Bianco inserted Calvin Harris in right field, slid Bench to center and put Garrett Wood at third. Wood’s first career start came in a regional final. He mustered three quality at-bats and drew a leadoff walk in the 5th inning of a 5-5 game that sparked a five-run inning that allowed the Rebels to put the game away and punch their ticket to the Super Regional. Criticize Bianco for in-game strategy all you want, but the ‘rigid and stubborn’ critique when it comes to lineup construction and adaptability is both invalid and outdated. This is the same man that started his closer in game three of a Super Regional last year.
I get that this is not a popular stance for many and that his future still seems to be hovering in purgatory, but Bianco managed well this weekend and deserves credit for it.
The long term significance of this
So, what does this all mean? Ole Miss is back in its third straight Super Regional, Bianco’s seventh as head coach. He has a record of 1-5. If I had a nickel for every text, DM or email I have received in the last 24 hours about whether Bianco is fired if he loses this Super Regional, I would enough have a sizable bar tab at Rafters. I have no idea what it means. My hunch, as it has been all along, is that Bianco needs to make the College World Series in order to feel confident about keeping his job. But is Ole Miss really going to fire a guy who made three consecutive Sweet 16s? The counter to that is, of course, that he’s gone to the College World Series once in 22 seasons and that the program is stale and he’s reached a ceiling. I get all of that. I cannot forecast the future.
I will ask you this: why does that have to be answered right now? Why not let everything play out? This team just accomplished something unprecedented in the Bianco era: it won a road regional for the first time — something that I felt was far more of a glaring blemish on his overall resumé than other postseason failures. Why not see where this journey ends first? That’s what the man in charge of making the decisions is doing. This is not a sermon about what people should and shouldn’t ponder, I just don’t understand asking the question before knowing the result. Does winning a regional absolve the failure that was the 2022 regular season? No, I don’t think so. Does making the College World Series? Yes, it does. We now sit in the gray area in-between. Does that remain a gray area or does this team win two more games and render all of this moot? I suppose we will find out in the next five or six days.
Final thoughts:
Ole Miss played the best baseball of any team in the Coral Gables Regional and was the rightful champion. Now, it heads to Hattiesburg to face a Southern Miss team that outlasted LSU for its second ever Super Regional birth. This is a Golden Eagles team that many fans will remember for its frightening offense in the 2021 Oxford Regional but is actually built around an effective pitching staff. We’ll get into this later in the week, but my initial thoughts are that it isn’t a great match up for Ole Miss. On the contrary, it is also a Conference USA School in a smaller ballpark. Two wins get the Rebels to Omaha. That’s not exactly David versus Goliath.
With the brand of baseball Ole Miss is currently playing, coupled with how insanely wrong I have been about a myriad of things about this year, I wouldn’t be surprised by anything. Elko warned the general public last week to not let the Rebels get hot. Well, the fuse has been lit, and Ole Miss has a chance to make the College World Series, which is all anyone could’ve asked for out of this team when it took the field in February.
On the horizon
I went too long today to do golf content, but a pair of Mississippians are playing in the U.S. Open. I’ll have covered of that later in the week.
Hattiesburg Super Regional preview podcast with Collin.
That’s all from me today. Thanks for being a loyal subscriber. Send to your friends and tell them to join on the fun hitting the subscribe button below. It is free.