Monthly Archives: April 2011

Jones County Junior College, seemingly loaded with strong arms, swept East Central in Ellisville on Friday and climbed to 15-5 (first) in the MACJC South Division. Andrew Pierce, the sophomore right-hander from Stringer, came on for Vito Perna to notch a save in a 5-3 win in the opener. This came three days after the Southern Miss signee beat Southwest 3-0 with a one-hit, 14-strikeout performance. Pierce is 7-1 and has three saves for the 29-13 Bobcats. Perna is 7-0. And Logan Riddell, who tossed a four-hitter in Game 2 on Friday as JCJC took a 2-1 victory, is 6-4. As of this morning, the Bobcats are trailed in the standings by Gulf Coast at 11-7, Pearl River at 11-9 and ECCC at 11-11. Nothing’s really settled yet in the seven-team race for the division’s four postseason berths. Holmes, which swept Itawamba at Fulton in a big twinbill on Friday, has clinched at least a share of the North title at 17-5. Northwest is 13-5, ICC and East Mississippi 12-8 and Northeast 11-9.

One week after pitcher Chase Wroten’s tragic death from a stroke, Hinds Community College returned to the playing field on Friday. In what had to be a very emotional day for the Eagles at Moss Field in Raymond, they swept an MACJC South Division doubleheader against Copiah-Lincoln 4-3 and 8-4. Freshman Tyler Akins carried the day for Hinds, getting the win on the mound in the opener and homering in both games. Hinds, which began the season ranked in the top 10, is 21-15 and 7-11 in the South, still in the chase for a berth in the postseason.
P.S. Mississippi College honored its seniors on Friday at Frierson Field in Clinton, and three of them came up large in the rubber game of its series against LeTourneau. After dropping the opener of the doubleheader, the Choctaws fell behind 5-0 in Game 2 but rallied for an 11-8 win. Seniors Andy Smith and Stuart Magee blasted home runs for MC, and senior Terrell Prescott notched his first career save with three scoreless innings. Magee, a Hinds CC product, leads the Choctaws with nine homers and 42 RBIs. He drove in three runs in the series opener on Thursday. MC (22-16), which has a regular season game left against Tougaloo on Tuesday, will play at Concordia-Texas next weekend in a best-of-3 series to start American Southwest Conference postseason play. The winners of the four opening round series advance to the ASC Tournament. … Millsaps’ season likely ended with its 2-and-out performance in the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference Tournament. The Majors (24-18) are a longshot for an NCAA Division III Tournament at-large bid. It’ll be the second straight year the Majors have missed the postseason.

Fred Lewis, who signed with Cincinnati as a free agent this off-season, is playing rehab games with Carolina in the Double-A Southern League. The former Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College star suffered an oblique injury in spring training and began the season on the Reds’ disabled list. Through games of Thursday with the Mudcats, the 30-year-old Lewis was 5-for-18 with three doubles, an RBI and a steal. A lefty-hitting outfielder who had a good year with Toronto in 2010, Lewis may be ready to return to the big leagues soon. But one wonders just how much he’ll play for a well-stocked Reds club.
P.S. Debut alert: Louis Coleman, a Schlater native and former Pillow Academy standout, made his first major league appearance Thursday night for Kansas City, tossing two scoreless innings in a loss to Cleveland. Coleman, a 6-foot-4 right-hander, was drafted by the Royals in the fifth round out of LSU in 2009 after helping the Tigers win the College World Series. He was rated KC’s No. 19 prospect entering this season.

This is a weekend for letting baseball just flow over you. So much to soak in. Millsaps faces elimination — and the end of its season — today in the SCAC Tournament. Rivals William Carey and Belhaven hook up tonight and Saturday in a big SSAC series at Smith-Wills Stadium. Delta State, ranked seventh in the first Division II South Region poll, visits GSC West leader Harding, No. 8 in the region, in a division series of considerable import. Resurgent Mississippi College, having clinched an ASC postseason berth, tries to keep its momentum going against LeTourneau in Clinton today. Ole Miss, down 0-1, continues a key SEC West series at Auburn tonight and Saturday. Mississippi State welcomes defending national champion and second-ranked South Carolina to Dudy Noble Field this weekend. Southern Miss, with B.A. Vollmuth back in the lineup, hosts last-place Marshall in C-USA play at Taylor Park. The state’s three SWAC schools, battling for first place in the East, all play home series this weekend. Many of the junior colleges will engage in pivotal doubleheaders today or Saturday as they race toward the finish of the regular season. High school playoffs, for both public and private schools, are in full swing today. And the scuffling Mississippi Braves (4-10 and last in the Southern League South) return to Trustmark Park on Saturday to launch a 10-game homestand.

Logan. The name at the top of the Jackson State batting stats has a familiar ring. That’s Kendall Logan, a junior outfielder who is ripping up SWAC pitching to the tune of a .386 average with six triples, eight homers, 35 RBIs and 15 stolen bases. Kendall Logan is the younger brother of Cameron Logan, who, like Kendall, was a star at Natchez High and Copiah-Lincoln Community College before moving on to the SWAC; Cameron is a senior at Texas Southern. Kendall and Cameron are cousins of another former Natchez/Co-Lin standout, Nook Logan, who played several years in the big leagues. Kendall Logan was drafted by Atlanta last June but elected to attend JSU. His 2011 season began with some turbulence; he was one of two JSU players suspended for three games in the wake of a dustup with Prairie View back in February. This seemed a little out of character for Logan, who was an honor student at Co-Lin and is majoring in civil engineering at JSU. At any rate, he seems to have put the incident behind him and has helped the Tigers stay in the fierce battle for first place in the SWAC East.
P.S. Big news: Jairo Asencio has thrown five scoreless innings for Atlanta in its current series with Los Angeles. If Asencio looks familiar, it’s because he pitched under the assumed name of Luis Valdez when he was with the Mississippi Braves in 2008. He was the closer on the Southern League pennant winner. … Gulf Coast CC product Tony Sipp allowed his first runs of the year for Cleveland on Wednesday night; ex-M-Braves star Jeff Francoeur accounted for two of the three with a home run for Kansas City. The Indians won anyway. … Injuries have given Matt Tolbert more playing time with the Minnesota Twins, but the former Ole Miss star from McComb hasn’t produced much. He’s hitting .188. … Nettleton native Bill Hall suffered a sprained ankle making a great catch for Houston on Wednesday and left the game. Hall was signed for his offensive prowess, but, ironically, it’s been his defense that has stood out thus far. He’s hitting just .197 with one homer and a bunch of strikeouts.

They’d like to get quality outings from their starters. And it would help if the bullpen stepped up. Solid, if not perfect, defense would be a plus. And, of course, some guys have got to get on base. But if there is one thing the Millsaps Majors can’t win without, it’s big hits from Will Hawkins. Hammerin’ Hawk, a senior outfielder from Nettleton, is hitting .384 with eight homers and 49 RBIs. The team average is .297, and they have 20 homers total. “As Will goes, we go” said Majors coach Jim Page. “I’ve told him that. He’s put us on his back this year.” Millsaps (24-16) heads into the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference Tournament on Thursday needing to win it all to ensure a berth in the NCAA Division III regionals. The Majors’ at-large bid hopes are very slim. It’s a situation similar to 2005, Page points out, when the Majors made a late surge and won the league tournament to qualify for the regionals. Millsaps has made six regional appearances and won eight league titles in Page’s 22-year tenure. He sees no reason why this club can’t pull it off. “This group has shown character and heart all year,” he said. “They’ve come from behind to win numerous times. We’ve learned with this team to be patient; they’ll figure out a way to get it done.” The Majors, who rallied to win two key games against Southwestern last weekend to earn the No. 2 seed from the West Division, open with DePauw on Thursday at 3:30 p.m. in Millington, Tenn. The six-team, double-elimination event runs through Sunday. Page said earlier this week that he was undecided on an opening game starter. It could be Aaron Williams (6-2, 3.84 ERA), Jake Mills (2-2, 3.26), Jason Riggins (5-0, 3.33) or even someone else. “We’re just looking at matchups,” Page said. The Majors are also looking to Hawkins, a standout on the football field and in the classroom during his four years at Millsaps, for a final hurrah on the diamond. “I don’t know what it is about him,” Page said. “He’s just phenomenal in every way.”

A cheer for Mississippi State, which ended a five-game losing streak to Ole Miss with a 6-1 win in Tuesday night’s Governor’s Cup game at Trustmark Park in Pearl. State’s Jarrod Parks was named MVP, going 2-for-3 to lift his average to .402. The Bulldogs, at 23-14, appear headed for their first winning season since 2007, when they made a remarkable run to the College World Series. … A cheer for Belhaven, which rallied to beat Mississippi College 8-7 at Smith-Wills Stadium and, apparently, claimed the Maloney Trophy for 2011. The Blazers scored twice in the bottom of the ninth against MC’s ninth pitcher — Shane Bennett — getting a leadoff triple from Matt Discon, a sac fly from Paul Moreno and ultimately a game-winning single from Lake Eiland. BU went 3-1 in its Maloney games (2-0 vs. MC and 1-1 vs. Millsaps). Millsaps went 3-2 and MC 1-4 in the round robin (there seems to be some confusion as to which of the three Millsaps-MC games counted as Maloney games). … And a cheer for former Mississippi Braves standout Brandon Beachy, who earned his first big league win, throwing six shutout innings against the Los Angeles Dodgers as Atlanta won 10-1. M-Braves alums Martin Prado and Freddie Freeman homered in Tuesday’s game.
P.S. A boo for Ole Miss, which committed three costly errors in the loss to State and played like a team preoccupied with its looming SEC series at Auburn, which begins Thursday. The Rebels bused back to Oxford late Tuesday and were to bus to Auburn at midday today. A tough turnaround but still not an excuse for a lackluster effort.

One of the many contributors to the Cleveland Indians’ amazing 12-4 start is Tony Sipp, who performs the somewhat anonymous duty of left-handed setup reliever. Sipp, who played at Moss Point High and Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College, has not allowed a run in eight appearances covering 8 2/3 innings. He has six holds. Sipp was a 45th-round draft pick by the Indians out of Clemson in 2004 and arrived in the majors in 2009. After posting a 2.93 ERA as a rookie, he slipped a bit last season, rising to 4.14. But he appears to back with a vengeance this spring. His current career ERA is 3.39, but this is his best stat: In 111 2/3 innings, he’s rung up 123 strikeouts. That’s what they call “swing and miss stuff.”
P.S. Decisions, decisions. Fight the crowd at Trustmark Park for the Ole Miss-Mississippi State Governor’s Cup game, or check out the Mississippi College-Belhaven Maloney Trophy Series game at Smith-Wills Stadium?

Willie Cabrera would have every reason to feel discouraged, but he’s not letting it show so far. Sent back to Double-A Mississippi last week, the 24-year-old outfielder went 1-for-4 with a pair of runs in his first game with the M-Braves on Saturday and then banged out four more hits in Sunday’s game. The scuffling M-Braves (4-6) won both against Mobile, their first two-game win streak of the young season. The California-born Cabrera, in his sixth season in the Atlanta Braves’ system, began this season at Triple-A Gwinnett, where he finished last year. He first arrived in Mississippi late in 2008 and put up very good numbers with the M-Braves in 2009 (.275, eight homers, 53 RBIs) and ’10 (.306, five homers, 37 doubles, 56 RBIs); he seemed ready and deserving of the move up. However, he wasn’t hitting much at Gwinnett, and when the Braves acquired Stefan Gartrell in a minor league trade with the Chicago White Sox last week, Cabrera was squeezed off the G-Braves’ roster. He’s a good addition to the M-Braves’ lineup, obviously, but he doesn’t really belong back here.
P.S. Tough call in picking the most impressive hitting performance by a college player on Sunday. Will Hawkins hit a pair of home runs to help Millsaps complete a two-game sweep of Southwestern and wrap up the No. 2 seed in the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference West Division heading into the tournament later this week. And Kellen Bozeman hit for the cycle and drove in seven runs as Delta State won the rubber game of a big Gulf South Conference series against Arkansas Tech. The Statesmen (11-4) are now tied with Tech for second in GSC West, a game back of Harding with two GSC series remaining. … Biggest flop on Sunday? Mississippi Valley State couldn’t hold a one-run lead in the bottom of the ninth and fell to last-place Alabama A&M; in the rubber game of their SWAC series. The Delta Devils dropped three games behind first-place Alcorn State in the East Division. The Braves swept Jackson State in a three-game series that concluded Saturday.

William Carey found a spark over the weekend, perhaps just in the nick of time. The Crusaders swept a three-game series with Spring Hill to move to 23-21 overall and 6-9 in the highly competitive Southern States Athletic Conference. (The SSAC has six teams ranked in the NAIA Top 25, including No. 1 Lee.) Carey, battling to make the postseason tournament in its first SSAC season, is currently fourth in the West Division, trailing Auburn-Montgomery (16-2), Faulkner (10-4) and Belhaven (9-6). The Crusaders play a three-game set against rival Belhaven, which is ranked 24th, next weekend at Jackson’s Smith-Wills Stadium. Carey’s Scotty Reese, a Terry native, threw a seven-hit shutout at Spring Hill on Friday, and the Crusaders erupted for 26 hits and 21 runs in Saturday’s doubleheader sweep. Quin Stokes, from Walnut Grove, drove in three runs in the opener and belted a grand slam in Game 2, one of three Carey bombs in that contest.