Tag Archives: Auburn Regional

06 Jun

handing out awards

The big prize was, of course, the regional championship, which Southern Miss secured on Monday by overpowering Penn 11-7 at Auburn, Ala. Fittingly, Dustin Dickerson, the junior shortstop from Laurel, was the winner of the Auburn Regional’s Most Outstanding Player award. He went 8-for-22 with four home runs and eight RBIs. He belted a huge three-run shot in Monday’s finale. The Golden Eagles dominated the all-tournament team, with six players making the list: Tanner Hall, Rodrigo Montenegro, Nick Monistere, Danny Lynch and Carson Paetow in addition to Dickerson. (Somehow, there just wasn’t room on the 11-man squad for Tate Parker, Will Armistead or Justin Storm.) USM (45-18) now waits to learn if it will be rewarded with a Super Regional at Taylor Park, where it set attendance records this year. … Elsewhere in the NCAA Tournament, former Madison Central star Braden Montgomery was named to the Stanford Regional all-tourney team; he homered for the Cardinal in Monday’s clincher. Former USM pitcher Hurston Waldrep, now at Florida, made the Gainesville Regional all-tourney team for the champion Gators, and USM alum Will McGillis, a grad transfer at South Carolina, made the all-tournament team for the Columbia Regional champion Gamecocks. … In MLB, Mississippi State alum Nathaniel Lowe was the star of the day for Texas, smacking a walk-off single as the red-hot Rangers beat St. Louis 4-3. It was the fourth career walk-off hit for Lowe, who went 2-for-5 to raise his average to .283. … Former State standout Justin Foscue, now in the Rangers’ minor league chain, and USM product Matt Wallner, a Minnesota prospect, were named to MLB Pipeline’s Prospect Team of the Week on Monday. Foscue posted a 1.521 OPS for Triple-A Round Rock last week. Wallner batted .423 with three homers for Triple-A St. Paul; he was also named the International League’s player of the week. … Colt Keith, the former Biloxi High star, was named the Double-A Eastern League’s player of the month for May after hitting .374 with five homers and 27 RBIs for Erie in the Detroit organization. … On the local front, Mississippi Braves outfielder Landon Stephens and left-hander Luis De Avila were selected as the Farm Bureau player and pitcher of the week after the Double-A club’s series at Birmingham. The M-Braves begin a six-game series against rival Biloxi tonight at Trustmark Park in Pearl.

05 Jun

three things

1 — After playing some six hours of do-or-die baseball over a 10-hour period, leaving the field after midnight on Sunday, Southern Miss earned the right to play again today. With a second straight Super Regional appearance on the line, the Golden Eagles will be up for it. USM meets Penn at 2 p.m. at Plainsman Park for the championship of the Auburn Regional. The Eagles scored a 9-4 revenge win against Samford in their first game on Sunday, then knocked off undefeated upstart Penn 11-2 in the nightcap. Heroes were all over the place. Matthew Etzel, Slade Wilks and Nick Monistere drove in two runs apiece against Samford, and three pitchers turned in a workmanlike effort, scattering 11 hits. The battle against Penn was toe-to-toe until the ninth, when USM scored eight times. Monistere, the freshman out of Northwest Rankin High, scored twice and drove in three more runs, and Dustin Dickerson, suddenly a slugger in the postseason, hit a three-run homer. But the big star was 6-foot-6 lefty Justin Storm, who retired 17 of the 18 batters he faced — 10 via strikeout — after coming on in relief.
2 — Former Ole Miss star Grae Kessinger is getting his first big league call-up today with the Houston Astros, who play at Toronto. Kessinger — the grandson of longtime MLB star and Ole Miss alum Don Kessinger — is having a big year at Triple-A Sugar Land, batting .284 with six homers and 32 RBIs. He has played shortstop, second and third base. Kessinger was drafted in the second round in 2019 and had put up very modest numbers before this season, his first in Triple-A. It’s unclear what Kessinger’s role will be; the Astros apparently are concerned about an oblique injury that has kept second baseman Jose Altuve out for a couple of games. The only other Mississippi product to debut in MLB this season also plays for the Astros. Right-hander J.P. France, a Mississippi State alum, was called up May 6 and has nailed down a spot in the Houston rotation.
3 — AJ Smith-Shawver, 20 years old and two years out of high school, made an impressive debut with Atlanta on Sunday, retiring seven of the eight batters he faced in relief against Arizona, and joins a ridiculously long and impressive list of former Mississippi Braves pitchers who have had a positive impact in The Show. The parade started with Blaine Boyer in 2005; he was one of four members (the others: Macay McBride, Anthony Lerew and Zach Miner) from the M-Braves’ original rotation to make the majors. Since then, we’ve seen the likes of Chuck James, Jo-Jo Reyes, Charlie Morton, Matt Harrison, Kris Medlen, Tommy Hanson, Craig Kimbrel, Mike Minor, Julio Teheran, Luis Avilan, Alex Wood, Sean Newcomb, Lucas Sims, Max Fried, A.J. Minter, Michael Soroka, Ian Anderson, Spencer Strider, Bryce Elder, Jared Shuster and Dylan Dodd. (That’s not the entire list.) Smith-Shawver was a seventh-round pick out of a Texas high school in 2021; he started this season in A-ball and made just two appearances for the Double-A M-Braves during his rapid rise. Atlanta’s scouting and development staff deserves a round of applause.

03 Jun

old-school artist

Power is all the rage in baseball. Check the box scores. Who hit one out? Blaze Jordan, Joe Gray Jr. and Colt Keith, all products of Mississippi high schools, blasted home runs in the minors on Friday, as did former Mississippi State star Hunter Stovall. Cheers all around. The art of hitting a single, of just putting a ball in play that results in a base knock, doesn’t have the wow factor. It’s kind of a shame. Here’s a tip of the cap to a guy who seems to have mastered that old-school art. Davis Bradshaw, former McLaurin High and Meridian Community College standout, hit a single on Friday for High-A Beloit in the Miami organization. It was his 33rd single among his 37 hits; he has no homers. The lefty-hitting Bradshaw is batting .398; he was at .415 in mid-May. He was out for a couple of weeks last month, so he doesn’t have enough at-bats to qualify for the Midwest League leaderboard, but he would be second in hitting in all of the minors if he did. Bradshaw has struck out just 16 times and walked eight in 93 at-bats over 29 games. Drafted out of MCC back in 2018, Bradshaw, now 25, carries a .307 career average — but has only two home runs. The lack of power is no doubt holding him back. He is not a rated prospect. He got a look in Double-A last year and hit .286 but was back in A-ball to start 2023. And he went right back to banging out singles, keeping that old-school art alive. P.S. Southern Miss and Auburn might have anticipated meeting on Day 2 of regional play, but they surely didn’t expect the clash to come in the losers bracket. The top two seeds in the Auburn Regional were upset by Samford and Penn. That’s baseball. BTW, Josh Rodriguez, who hit that massive 10th-inning homer for Samford on Friday, was a first-team All-MACCC pick at Hinds Community College last year. … Props to East Union (Class 2A) and Purvis (4A) for winning MHSAA state titles Friday at Trustmark Park in Pearl. Amory plays St. Stanislaus for the 3A crown and Saltillo battles East Central for the 5A title today.

02 Jun

number crunching

Anything can happen on the field in a double-elimination tournament, but there are numbers on the stat sheet that bode well for Southern Miss’ chances in the Auburn Regional that starts today. In terms of run differential — a good measure of a team’s balance — USM, at plus-113, is far better than top seed Auburn (plus-69) or No. 3 Samford (plus-30), the Golden Eagles’ first-round foe. Penn, the 4-seed, has a plus-137, but the competition the Quakers faced in the Ivy League doesn’t compare to what the other three see in the baseball-crazy South. (The bottom three teams in the Ivy this season won a combined 24 games.) USM also has a far better staff ERA (4.60) than either Samford (6.00) or Auburn (5.80). Pitching coach — and head-coach-in-waiting — Christian Ostrander does a masterful job with young arms. Tanner Hall, the staff ace, is 12-3 with a 2.23 ERA. The junior right-hander, a virtual unknown at the start of the 2022 campaign, has won back-to-back conference pitcher of the year awards and has been a first-team All-America pick both years by Collegiate Baseball Magazine. But you gotta have some depth. USM can trot out four pitchers with sub-4.00 ERAs, an accomplishment in NCAA Division I ball. One of those four is closer Justin Storm, an intimidating (6 feet 6, 225 pounds) lefty who is 5-1 with eight saves, a 2.52 ERA and 59 strikeouts in 35 2/3 innings. Samford’s ace is Jacob Cravey (9-2, 3.19, CB second-team All-America, Southern Conference pitcher of the year), and the Bulldogs closer is Ben Petschke (14 saves, 4.29). Auburn’s top arm is starter Tommy Vail (5-1, 3.46). For the record, Auburn and Samford have a significantly better fielding percentage number (.978) than USM (.970), though the Eagles, with 41 wins, are hardly considered a poor defensive team. For what it’s worth, the Eagles have proven their mettle on the road, going 15-12 away from Taylor Park, including winning the Sun Belt Conference Tournament title in Montgomery, Ala. P.S. Kudos to Resurrection Catholic (Class 1A) and Lewisburg (6A) for winning MHSAA state championships on Thursday at Trustmark Park in Pearl.

29 May

road trip

Southern Miss will load up the bus and head east about 300 miles for its NCAA regional assignment. The Golden Eagles are the 2-seed in the Auburn Regional and will open Friday against Samford, another Alabama school. Top-seeded Auburn will play Penn on Friday. USM is 41-17 and champion of the Sun Belt Conference. Auburn (34-21-1) went 1-2 in the SEC Tournament. Samford, a 36-win team that won the Southern Conference Tournament, is led by John Anderson, who has 22 homers, and Jayden Davis, a .363 hitter. Also on the Bulldogs roster is Hinds Community College alum Josh Rodriguez (.271, 11 homers), an outfielder, and Kace Garner, a Northwest Rankin grad who played at Meridian CC and Mississippi State before landing at Samford. A backup catcher, he hit .143 in 19 games. One of Auburn’s big sticks is Bryson Ware, former Germantown High and Pearl River CC standout who was a second-team All-SEC pick this season. The Tigers are coached by Amory High and Itawamba CC alum Butch Thompson, a former Mississippi State assistant coach. The winner of the Auburn Regional will meet the winner of the Clemson Regional, which also includes Tennessee, in the Super Regional round.