Tag Archives: Delta State

08 May

make room

Delta State’s history book is filled with tales of great individual performances, and the Statesmen will make room for another after capturing the Gulf South Conference Tournament championship on Tuesday. Hunter Riggins, a sophomore from Hernando, threw a two-hit shutout against third-ranked West Florida and retired the last 17 batters in a 6-0 win that gave the Statesmen their 15th GSC title. Riggins, named the tourney’s Most Outstanding Player, tossed seven shutout innings against Valdosta State in the tournament opener at Oxford, Ala. Riggins is 10-3 with a 2.13 ERA in 14 starts. Used out of the bullpen as a freshman, Riggins posted a 3.09 ERA and six saves, then quickly emerged as a staff ace this season, winning his first six starts. David Herrington and Darek Sargent, who combined for 23 hits and 10 RBIs in the six tourney games, also made the all-tournament team. C.J. Estave, who drove in eight runs, certainly rated consideration. The Statesmen, 39-12 under Mike Kinnison, now move on to NCAA Division II regional play and begin the chase for a second national championship.

06 May

what a day

Take a deep breath, Mississippi. On a Sunday that included Ole Miss’ all-time crazy win at LSU, Southern Miss’ huge walk-off win against Florida Atlantic, Delta State’s homer-fueled, elimination-game win in the Gulf South Tournament and the Mississippi Braves’ squeeze-bunt walk-off vs. Jacksonville, the scene-stealing moment from a state-connected player may well have been delivered by big leaguer Hunter Renfroe in San Diego. The former Mississippi State star hit a two-out, pinch-hit, walk-off grand slam to beat the Los Angeles Dodgers and ace closer Kenley Jansen 8-5. “This is my second walk-off home run, and there’s nothing like it in this world,” Renfroe, the pride of Crystal Springs, said in an mlb.com game story. It was the first pinch-hit walk-off slam in Padres history and salvaged the third game of the series for San Diego, which suffered tough losses in the first two. “These moments shape your season,” Padres manager Andy Green told mlb.com. The slam was Renfroe’s seventh homer of the season. Fighting a slump of late, he is batting .227 with 16 RBIs. He joins Tim Anderson – American League player of the month for April – and Jarrod Dyson as Mississippians with walk-off homers in MLB already in 2019. P.S. Cody Reed, the Northwest Mississippi Community College alum from Horn Lake, worked 2 1/3 scoreless innings Saturday in his 2019 debut for Cincinnati but was returned to the minors on Sunday. Reed has been up and down with the Reds since 2016. He has a 3.21 ERA at Triple-A Louisville.

25 Apr

short hops

The all-time series is rather lopsided between Delta State and Mississippi College. The Statesmen lead 122-44-2. More telling about the rivalry is the recent history: 5-5 over the last 10 games, 3-3 in 2018. And MC won the two biggest games last year, eliminating DSU in both the Gulf South Conference Tournament and NCAA Division II South Regional. The schedule brings them together again in Clinton on Saturday (doubleheader) and Sunday to conclude the regular season. Buckle up. MC, ranked No. 4 in the South Region, is 19-5 in the GSC and first in the standings. DSU, No. 3 in the South Region, is 18-8 and third. Delta State’s pitching (see Dalton Minton, Hunter Riggins, Melvin Frazier, et al.) has been outstanding; the Statesmen lead the league (by a wide margin) in ERA with a 2.50. Can MC’s hurlers (Chris Crosby, Garrett Hollinghead, Ryan Lane, et al.) keep pace? … Blue Mountain College and William Carey University get their final tuneups this weekend for next week’s Southern States Athletic Conference Tournament, with BMC playing a three-game set at Bethel (Tenn.) and Carey hosting Loyola of New Orleans. The Toppers are 25-21-1 and 14-9 in the SSAC, third behind NAIA powerhouses Faulkner and Middle Georgia State. The Crusaders are 20-24 and 12-11, seventh in the league. … A tough year for Millsaps College will likely end this weekend in Conway, Ark., where the Majors will play in one of the Southern Athletic Association’s two four-team tournaments that decide the championship series teams. The Majors (9-31) are the 8-seed overall and face No. 1 Hendrix in Friday’s opening round. Rhodes and Centre, the 4- and 5-seeds, are also in this bracket. Hendrix (28-12) swept the Majors three straight by a cumulative score of 28-5 during the season. Pitching (7.28 ERA) has been Millsaps’ biggest issue, though the defense (102 errors) has been shaky, as well. But, upsets do happen in postseason baseball. Teams go on improbable runs. Millsaps has done it before. … MUW’s second season ended on Tuesday with a pair of losses to Stillman in Columbus. The Owls are 16-11 and may get an invitation to the USCAA championships as they did in 2018. MUW, a non-scholarship program, went 3-1 vs. Rust, 2-0 vs. Tougaloo and 1-3 vs. Blue Mountain. … Belhaven University hired Kyle Palmer, formerly director of baseball operations at California Baptist University in Riverside, as the retired Hill Denson’s replacement for 2020. The Texas Lutheran graduate will be a first-time head coach. BU, completing its transition from NAIA to NCAA Division III, is expected to be eligible for the American Southwest Conference championship next season.

22 Apr

home run derby

The great home run race in Mississippi last season involved just one player. Delta State’s Zack Shannon chased and ultimately broke the record for homers in a single season by a state collegian in any division. Shannon’s 31 bombs eclipsed the previous record of 29 shared by ex-Mississippi State stars Rafael Palmeiro and Bruce Castoria. No one is threatening Shannon’s record in 2019, but there is quite a battle for the state long ball lead. State’s Justin Foscue and Mississippi College’s Blaine Crim have hit 11, and Ole Miss’ Tyler Keenan and Southern Miss’ Matt Wallner have 10. At nine are UM’s Thomas Dillard and Cole Zabowski, with State’s Dustin Skelton and Delta State’s Jake Barlow sitting on eight. Foscue hit his 11th against Arkansas on Friday; it was his only hit in the series in which the Bulldogs were swept. Crim, having a monster year, homered in both of MC’s wins at West Alabama; he drove in seven runs in the Friday game. Wallner, starting to heat up for USM, hit three homers over the weekend as the Golden Eagles swept Charlotte; with 45 career bombs, Wallner is tied with Fred Cooley for fourth on USM’s all-time list. UM’s Keenan hit his 10th in the Rebels’ lone win in a three-game set at Auburn. Zabowski also went yard in that game. Barlow leads a Delta State team that has 30 homers, one fewer than Shannon hit in 2018. P.S. Ex-State standout Mitch Moreland leads Mississippians in the majors in home runs with seven. Interestingly enough, McComb native Jarrod Dyson, whose outstanding tool is speed, has the same number – three – as Brian Dozier, the Southern Miss product and a more noted slugger.

16 Apr

riding a wave

Trent Giambrone is in a groove. Again. Or still. At any rate, the former Delta State star has homered in three straight games and four of his last five at Triple-A Iowa. He has lifted his average to .302 through 10 games in his first hack at this new level. Giambrone spent most of spring training in the Chicago Cubs’ big league camp as a non-roster invitee and batted .324 with two homers in 34 at-bats. That came after a .327 showing in the Arizona Fall League, which came on the heels of a 17-homer season at Double-A Tennessee. The 5-foot-8, 178-pound infielder, 25, isn’t rated among the Cubs’ best prospects but surely is on the big club’s radar. (Though it isn’t currently lacking infield talent, the big club is 6-9.) “I’m just trying to hone in on my approach, take it day by day and not really think about the big picture of anything else and just be myself, mainly,” Giambrone recently told the Des Moines Register.

09 Apr

trivia time

Here’s a timely trivia question: Who was the winning pitcher for the Jackson Senators in the deciding game of the 2003 Central League Championship Series? It was none other than Jeremy McClain, then a crafty right-hander for the independent Sens, now the newly named athletic director at Southern Miss. McClain enjoyed a highlight-filled playing career. The Houlka native went 45-9 at Delta State – where he is in the Hall of Fame – and still holds school records for career wins, strikeouts and innings pitched. He went 15-0 for the 1999 team that made the NCAA Division II regionals. He had a fling in affiliated ball with the Boston Red Sox, then pitched for two different independent teams at Jackson’s Smith-Wills Stadium. McClain won seven games for an awful DiamondKats team in 2000 and spent two seasons with the Senators, helping them reach the CBL title series in 2002 and claim the pennant the next year. He was the starter for the Sens’ first home opener in 2002, and in Game 5 of the ’03 finals, he came on in relief in the 10th inning and earned the victory when Keto Anderson delivered a game-winning knock in the bottom half. It was McClain’s final appearance as a player, and he said after the game that season was as much fun as he had ever had playing baseball.

25 Mar

alternative energy

Power, in particular the power of Zack Shannon, was a big part of Delta State’s game in 2018, when the team bashed its way to 42 wins and another regional appearance. Minus Shannon – and fellow sluggers Clay Casey and Brian Lane – the 2019 Statesmen figured to be a different kind of club, more reliant on pitching and defense. That has played out. The current team doesn’t have a lot of thunder in the lineup but has a brilliant 2.18 staff ERA — and is ranked as high as No. 2 in NCAA Division II. Still, as the Statesmen showed on Sunday, an occasional burst of power can come in handy. DSU got three home runs from Hayden White and a fourth from Jake Barlow in a much-needed 16-6 win over nationally ranked West Florida, which had won the first two games in the Gulf South Conference series at Ferriss Field. White, a former Madison-Ridgeland Academy and Copiah-Lincoln Community College star, had just one homer before Sunday. Barlow, the team’s best hitter (.371), has a team-best seven bombs; no one else has more than two. Last year, the Statesmen averaged 1.3 homers a game (twice this year’s average), led by Shannon’s state college-record 31, Casey’s 18 and Lane’s nine. This year, the team’s energy is in the arms of Hunter Riggins (6-2, 1.55 ERA), Dalton Minton (5-1, 2.65), Melvin Frazier (4-2, 2.74) and others. DSU is 20-7 now, 12-5 in the GSC, second only to UWF (13-2) with ample time to catch up.

05 Mar

spring flings

There was an under-the-radar Mississippi baseball aficionados moment late in the St. Louis-Detroit Grapefruit League game on Monday: The Tigers’ Kade Scivicque, a former Southwest Mississippi Community College star, took ex-Ole Miss standout Mike Mayers deep in the eighth inning. (Detroit won the game 9-5, but no one really cares about that.) It was the first hit in four at-bats of the spring for Scivicque, in Detroit’s camp as a non-roster invitee. An All-SEC catcher at LSU, he was drafted in the fourth round by the Tigers in 2015, traded to Atlanta (spending some time with the Mississippi Braves), released and re-signed by Detroit (twice). He’s a .268 career hitter in the minors, having reached Triple-A. Mayers, a third-round pick by St. Louis in 2013, has a 6.75 ERA in three spring appearances. He spent most of 2018 in the big leagues, posting a 4.70 ERA with two wins, a save and six holds in 50 games, and figures to land a bullpen job again this season. … Delta State product Trent Giambrone, in the Chicago Cubs’ camp as a non-roster player, went 0-for-1 with a walk and two runs on Monday; he is 7-for-16 this spring with a .471 on-base average, two homers, three RBIs and four runs. … Former Harrison Central High standout Bobby Bradley, in Cleveland’s camp as a 40-man roster member for the first time, went 0-for-1 as a sub and has gotten just three at-bats this spring. He’ll likely be back in Triple-A. … Ex-Ole Miss star Aaron Barrett, making a valiant comeback attempt with Washington, worked a scoreless inning, cutting his ERA to 12.00 in three appearances. Barrett has endured myriad injuries (see previous posts) since his last MLB game in 2015. … Itawamba CC alum Tim Dillard, 35 and in his 18th pro season, suffered a blown save for Texas and saw his ERA climb to 23.14 in three outings. Dillard, son of ex-big leaguer Steve, last pitched in the majors in 2012 with Milwaukee, which drafted him in 2002.

27 Feb

making news

Mississippi Valley State finally got on the field Tuesday for its first game of the season after a couple of postponements. The Delta Devils lost 4-2 at Arkansas State, giving up a lead in the eighth inning. The bigger news from the Delta on Tuesday comes from Cleveland, where Delta State beat Arkansas Tech 9-2 to improve to 13-0 – matching its best-ever start – and also learned that it has jumped to No. 1 in the NCBWA’s NCAA Division II poll. The Statesmen returned just one regular position player from the outstanding 2018 team, but Mike Kinnison has kept the green machine humming, as he always seems to do. DSU is hitting .301 with 87 runs, led by David Herrington (.431), Darek Sargent (.340, 17 RBIs) and the remarkable Jake Barlow, who hit for the cycle on Sunday, belted a grand slam on Tuesday and is batting .412 with three homers and 15 RBIs. Not to be overlooked by any means is DSU’s pitching staff, which has a ridiculous 0.90 ERA. Hunter Riggins is 4-0 with an 0.33, Seth Hougesen 3-0, 0.73 and Melvin Frazier 3-0, 1.29. The Statesmen play Arkansas Tech again today at Ferriss Field, then head to Georgia for a weekend Gulf South series against Shorter.

26 Feb

going full tilt

As a 25th-round draft pick, an undersized infielder from a small school, Trent Giambrone had some things to prove in pro ball. He’s doing just that. The ex-Delta State standout had a day in the Cactus League on Monday, going 2-for-4 with a double and a home run for the Chicago Cubs against the Los Angeles Dodgers. Giambrone, 5 feet 8, 175 pounds, is currently the Cubs’ No. 20 prospect (per MLB Pipeline) and is in big league camp as a non-roster invitee. He was named an organization All-Star after the 2018 season, when he batted .251 with 17 homers and 26 steals at Double-A Tennessee. He had a three-homer, nine-RBI game for the Smokies last summer. Then he went to the Arizona Fall League and hit .327 there. Giambrone, who played second base on Monday, has played six different positions in the minors, the kind of versatility Cubs manager Joe Maddon likes. A scouting report also hails Giambrone’s “full-tilt style of play.” He’ll likely begin his fourth pro season in Triple-A, perhaps the final proving ground.