Thoughts from the Rebels' 4-0 start
A lot of baseball thoughts and a quick VCU primer
Hope everyone has had a great week. We’ve got two new podcasts out. Both are with Collin Brister. The first one recapped opening weekend for Ole Miss. You can check that out here or anywhere you get podcasts. Today’s previewed the upcoming weekend and reflected on the Rebels’ 4-0 start. Mailbag Friday followed our discussion. You can check that out here or anywhere you get podcasts.
I was behind on newsletters this week. I’ll explain why in a minute, but we have a lot to catch up on. This will mostly be baseball notes. I’ll have something out on Sunday catching up on other topics.
Trimiesha Joyner’s improbable recovery from a brain aneurysm
I spent most of the early part of the week writing a story I had been working on for a couple of weeks. In September, Trimiesha Joyner, the wife of Ole Miss defensive line coach Randall Joyner, suffered a brain aneurysm rupture while working out in the Ole Miss rec center. A perfectly healthy 29-year-old woman, there was no guarantee she’d survive and the chances of a compromised quality of life were fairly high. Twenty-six days after emergency surgery to stop the hemorrhaging in her brain, she returned to Vaught-Hemingway Stadium for the Ole Miss-LSU game. The rest of the story details that nearly fatal day, the ongoing recovery process that she is still battling through today and how Randall dealt with it while still trying to coach a team that ascended to a historic regular season. You can read the story here, if you wish.
I Randall and Trimiesha’s outlook on this to be inspiring. They tackled the recovery head on. It’s cost her a lot. She had to drop out of graduate school because she periodically struggles to retain new information. She wears earplugs when she goes out to dinner. The radio can’t be too loud in the car. But not once in the two hours I spoke with Trimiesha did she mention anything about wondering why this happened to her or what she cannot accomplish.
As she put it:
“I have learned that I can sit here and pout with the bad days I am having. I can feel sorry for what happened to me. Or, I can take the rest I need to take, listen to my body, and get up the next day and try again. I don't want to let what happened to me change what I want to do in life.”
It also reminded me that these coaches and their families are humans just like us. They have public, high paying jobs that serve as entertainment for consumers, but they deal with real struggles and real issues just like the rest of us. Randall is a rising star in the coaching profession and Trimiesha is tougher than nails. They are great people.
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Baseball thoughts after four games
I promise we will get back to a normal schedule next week with Monday reaction to the weekend series and everything else. That story took more time than I thought it would, which is okay. It was worth it. But it just happened to coincide with baseball’s opening weekend. Ok, some thoughts.
Derek Diamond was pretty good in his first outing. The weather conditions weren’t ideal for pitching. He was pretty fastball-heavy in this outing. He didn’t really need much else. He struck out eight five innings of two-run, two-hit ball. Diamond was 93-94 with the fastball in the first inning and dropped off to 88-90 by the fourth. I don’t really know what to read into that, but it’s worth monitoring because it happened last year. He’s talked about emphasizing spin rate more than velocity, but no one chooses to throw 88 when 94 is an option. I’ll be interested to see if he throws more breaking balls in this start and how that looks. That will be more telling in terms of how he’s improved as a pitcher. He was fine. I want to see it against a good lineup.
John Gaddis was exactly what I figured. He worked fast, pitched to contact and didn’t have a ton of walk issues despite only throwing 47 strikes on 75 pitches. Bianco pulled him right at the number after stating he was on a 75-pitch limit for the weekend. Again, I just want to see more of a sample size before making any sort of real judgement.
Drew McDaniel was fine. The second batter of the game hit a ball to the moon, but he settled in after that. Only 33 strikes on 60 pitches in concerning a bit concerning. Staying in the zone (and throwing quality strikes) was an issue last year. I still believe Jack Washburn will factor into this rotation at some point, but if McDaniel can be decent on Sundays, it gives Ole Miss another long relief option in the pen with Washburn.
Washburn started in the Rebels’ 15-5 win over Arkansas State on Wednesday. He gave up a couple of early runs that were in part due to an error, but I thought he was pretty good overall. He has one hell of a breaking ball and the fastball gets in on hitters quicker than its sheer velocity would state. The pre-analytics term for this was a “heavy” fastball (think Brady Bramlett), but nine times out of 10 that just means it has a high spin rate. The one slight with Washburn so far is that he still seems to pitch like a reliever. When he missed, he missed up due to overthrowing. He looked jacked the hell up out there — you know, like a reliever that inherited two base runners in a one-run game in the eighth inning. If he can relax a little bit an adjust to more of a starter’s mentality, then I do think he will have a crack at making this weekend rotation.
Ole Miss has absolutely obliterated inferior pitching so far. If this continues, some of these midweek games are going to be unwatchable. That’s a good thing, of course, but what’s funny is that early in the year it has actually worked to the detriment of the pitching staff. Ole Miss has played four games. Only one game has gone the full nine innings. Instead of 36 innings to get pitchers some in-game work, Bianco has only had 28 innings. It’s not the biggest deal in the world, but I imagine he has to be a little annoyed with it. Brandon Johnson, the team’s presumed closer and a top-two bullpen arm, has yet to pitch this year. Again, it will be fine. But it’s just sort of ironic that the offense is actually making it harder on the pitching staff to fill out roles.
Speaking of who hasn’t pitched, none of this trio has thrown yet this year: Jackson Kimbrell, Wes Burton and Josh Mallitz. Those are three guys on last year’s staff that played somewhat of a role. Typically, guys like that improve and take on a bigger role the next year. That may still end up being true, but I did find it interesting that Bianco went with Riley Maddox, Hunter Elliot, Dylan Delucia (twice), Cole Baker and Matt Parenteau over some of the returnees. The only returnee (aside from the totally obvious contributors) that pitched was Mitch Murrell. The coaching staff believes he’s shown great improvement and will help the team this year.
So, where does that leave Burton, Kimbrell and Mallitz? It would be silly to say after four games that none of them will have roles. I imagine at least two, if not all three, will contribute. Kimbrell is a left-hander on a staff thin on lefties. Burton has a frame that scouts drool over. Mallitz throws strikes, often to a fault. I say all of this just to point out that this is worth monitoring. Perhaps Ole Miss molds into a deeper and better bullpen because of who it didn’t have a year ago. It’ll be fascinating to watch play out. Call it an educated guess, but I don’t think Mike Bianco wants to repeat last year in this sense: he entered SEC play with a bunch of guys he thought he could trust, and ended up scrambling to find anyone he could trust, which led to Dougherty having a redshirt ripped off and Brandon Johnson getting a chance as a last resort. This year, I think he’d like to enter conference play feeling certain about a handful of guys versus having a hunch about a lot of guys, if that makes sense.
Speaking of Maddox, he was the eye-popping newcomer we discussed last week. There is always one that sticks out on opening weekend. I have no clue what to make of him just yet, but a 95 mph fastball with a slider at 82 — both of which he threw for strikes to the tune of 17 strikes in 19 pitches — will play against anyone in this sport. That was impressive.
Kemp Alderman’s power is sort of absurd. He hit an opposite-field double on Sunday that pinballed off the right-center wall despite never getting more than four feet off the ground. If the second baseman had put his body in front of it, he might not still be with us today. Alderman followed that up with a home run to dead center (a part of that ballpark that’s insanely hard to get one out), into the wind — and he didn’t even put his body into it. He just flicked at it.
That is rare power. Hell, the double was struck harder than the home run. And for a guy that struggled to catch up to velocity last year, it’s worth noting the double came off former Ole Miss pitcher Kaleb Hill, who sat around 90 for most of his outing. That’s obviously not the highest level of pitching Alderman will face this year, but it’s a good early sign, and it wasn’t off some schmuck thumbing it over the plate at 81 mph with no movement.
I got a mailbag question earlier today about what fans are overreacting to through four games. My answer was lineup construction. At the center of that concern is Hayden Leatherwood, who hit .285 with seven home runs and an .798 OPS last year. Leatherwood has only started in one of four games this year. Bianco put out today’s lineup card as I wrote this and Leatherwood isn’t it. Bianco had reservations about Leatherwood’s ability to hit left-handed pitching last year. I found that to be a little overblown and unfair, but Mike has forgotten more baseball than I will ever know. Even that is true, it’s worth asking what Leatherwood has to do to become an every day guy at this point. He has six plate appearances this year and has two home runs and a hit-by-pitch. He has struck out just once. Bianco has opted for Ben Van Cleve over Leatherwood. Today, Bianco started Van Cleve over BOTH Leatherwood and Alderman. As it pertains to Alderman, maybe there’s something we don’t know as to why he is out today. But that’s a guy that needs to stockpile at-bats in order to be properly evaluated. As for Leatherwood, VCU is throwing a left-hander today, but it still seems odd. Also, don’t you know exactly what Van Cleve is at this point? Why do we need to see more from him, unless Bianco believes he is the best option. It’s only four games. But it is puzzling and potentially troubling if Leatherwood continues to not start.
Hayden Dunhurst tweaked a hamstring last Saturday. Bianco said he would be back no later than Friday against VCU. Dunhurst is not in the Friday lineup. Maybe it is out of an abundance of caution, but that’s something to keep an eye on.
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A little more on VCU
As I said last week, this space will be more useful once we get deeper into the season and closer to conference play. The Rams were a two-seed in the Starkville regional last year. They lost a lot off the pitching staff and a decent bit of their lineup.
VCU is starting three left-handers. All three were pretty heavy contributors out of the bullpen last year. Their Saturday guy, Maddison Furman, slid into the rotation in the second half of last year. The rotation, in order:
VCU: LHP Jack Masloff
VCU: LHP Maddison Furman
VCU: LHP Campbell EllisBased on what they did last weekend, it appears VCU might be pitching backward? Edwards was the Friday guy last week. Masloff was on Saturday and Furman threw on Sunday.
Their closer, Mason Delane, was a weekend starter last season.
Third baseman Tyler Locklear led the Rams in home runs last year with 16. He will be the team’s best hitter. He already has three in four games this season.
The Rams return the bulk of their infield but replace all of their outfield from a year ago.
That’s about all I could gather.
On the horizon
Back to a regular newsletter schedule, I promise.
Sunday baseball discussion with Collin Brister.
That’s all from me today. Thanks for being a loyal subscriber. Send to your friends and tell them to join in on the fun by hitting the subscribe button below. It is free.