Tag Archives: summer baseball

06 Apr

trending …

Hot: Delta State has won six straight games, beating Christian Brothers 9-7 at Ferriss Field in Cleveland on Friday. The Statesmen (22-14, 13-6 GSC) rallied from 7-1 down to go ahead on three-run homer in the eighth inning by Dylan Dendy. Noah Magee got the last four outs, all via strikeout. … William Carey University has won five straight and 12 of 13 after whipping Brewton-Parker 11-4 at Wheeler Field in Hattiesburg. Jake Lycette and Bailee Hendon drove in three runs each for the Crusaders (23-10, 13-6 SSAC).
Not: Ole Miss fell to top-ranked Arkansas 8-3 at Fayetteville and has lost six in a row, including five straight in SEC play. The Rebels (18-14, 3-8) have surrendered 59 runs during the losing skid. … Mississippi College lost to Valdosta State 7-5 at Frierson Field in Clinton and has dropped 10 of its last 12. Starter Holland Townes (3-4) yielded seven hits, four walks, two HBPs and five runs in 5 2/3 innings for the Choctaws (14-18, 6-13 GSC), who have a staff ERA of 6.35.
Friday firsts in MLB: Former Mississippi State star Justin Foscue got his first big league at-bat and flied out for Texas in its romp against Houston. … Ex-MSU standout Brent Rooker, now with Oakland, hit his first homer of the season in another loss by the A’s. … Ole Miss alum James McArthur got his first save of 2024 and former MSU star Chris Stratton his first win as Kansas City beat the Chicago White Sox.
P.S. The Legacy League, a wood-bat developmental league, will begin play in June, 2025, at Jackson’s Smith-Wills Stadium, according to a press release from Tim Bennett, who operates the Hank Aaron Sports Academy at Smith-Wills. The Legacy League will have 10 teams, comprised of college players as well as players from other countries, in its inaugural season, per the announcement. The teams will represent local communities and play a 40-game schedule. The league website lists Dusty Baker, Andruw Jones, Brian Jordan, Ralph Garr and Deuce McAllister among its owners/members. There are a large number of college summer leagues around the country, including the Cape Cod League, Texas Collegiate League, Coastal Plain League, Appalachian League, Perfect Game League, Southeast Collegiate League, Valley League and the New Albany-based Cotton States League, which once operated in Jackson.

11 Jul

summer stock

Ole Miss’ Jacob Gonzalez is 1-for-7 for Team USA and teammate Hunter Elliott worked 2 2/3 scoreless innings in one of the team’s two games in a tournament in The Netherlands. UM coach Mike Bianco is managing the Collegiate National Team, 1-1 in the tournament with a win against Italy and a loss to Japan. They play Cuba today. … With five hits over his last three games, Kellum Clark has boosted his average to .270 in the Cape Cod League. The Brandon native, who batted .254 with 14 homers at Mississippi State last season, has driven in six runs and scored seven for Wareham. His MSU teammate Jackson Fristoe has a 11.11 ERA in four games for the Gatemen, and Southern Miss’ Niko Mazza, a Madison native, is 1-1 with a 3.37 for that team. Ole Miss catcher Calvin Harris is 5-for-13 since joining the Cotuit club. USM’s Isaiah Rhodes has a 2.07 ERA in three appearances for Hyannis, and UM’s Wes Burton is 1-0, 5.06 for the Harbor Hawks. … William Carey’s Patrick Lee is second in the Texas Collegiate League with a .361 average and tops the league in runs with 30. He is one of several Mississippians playing for the Acadiana Cane Cutters. … In the New Albany-based Cotton States League, the HillCountry Generals are off to a 14-3 start, far and away best in the five-team college summer loop. Evan Radford, a former USM player now listed with East Mississippi Community College, is batting .500 with three homers and 15 RBIs for the Generals. Also for the Generals: EMCC’s Zac Butler is batting .429 with 17 runs; Northwest CC’s Peeko Townsend leads the league with five homers; Pontotoc native Caleb Hobson has scored 22 runs; and Amory’s Brody Bickerstaff is 4-0 with a 3.01 ERA.

06 Jul

in the summertime …

Ole Miss’ Hayden Dunhurst was 2-for-6 with an RBI in a three-game intrasquad series over the weekend for USA Baseball’s Collegiate National Team. Rebels teammate Jacob Gonzalez went 0-for-1 in the lone game he played in. The Mississippi State contingent on the roster – Logan Tanner, Landon Sims and Jackson Fristoe – did not appear in the box scores. The Stars will face the Stripes in another intrasquad tonight in Greeneville, Tenn. … Up in the Cape Cod League: Former Germantown High and Pearl River Community College star Bryson Ware hit his first homer of the summer on Monday for Falmouth. Ware, currently at Auburn, is just 2-for-24 with 13 strikeouts in the prestigious college summer league. Ole Miss infielder Peyton Chatagnier went 1-for-4 Monday for Orleans. He is enjoying a good summer: .286, two homers, seven RBIs and two steals. Southern Miss’ Ben Ethridge threw a clean inning Monday for Bourne, trimming his ERA to 18.00 in three games. … Jackson State’s Chenar Brown, SWAC freshman of the year, is batting .246 with eight RBIs in 19 games for Danville in the Appalachian League. … Pearl River CC product Von Seibert, a Mississippi State signee, is hitting .274 with five homers and 15 RBIs for Thomasville in the Coastal Plain League. … USM’s Will Tynes is 2-3 with a 3.92 ERA in five starts for Acadiana in the Texas Collegiate League. … In the Cotton States League North Division (based in New Albany): Peeko Townsend, of Northwest CC, is putting up big numbers for the Tippa County Tribe with a .471 average, three homers, 11 RBIs and 11 runs. Itawamba CC’s Roe Ketchum is 3-0, 1.20 in four starts for the Golden Triangle Jets.

24 Jun

show a little glove

Defense doesn’t often get the attention it deserves, but the annual announcement of the ABCA/Rawlings Gold Glove Awards shines a little light. Ole Miss catcher Hayden Dunhurst and Pearl River Community College third baseman Dalton Cummins earned that recognition on Wednesday. Dunhurst, a sophomore from Carriere and a second-team All-SEC pick, threw out 16 would-be basestealers and picked off five runners this season. He joins Stuart Turner, a former major leaguer, as Ole Miss catchers to win a Gold Glove. Dunhurst was a semifinalist for the Buster Posey Award given to the top college catcher; Turner won that award in 2013 when it was called the Johnny Bench Award. Cummins, a sophomore from Seminary and a Delta State signee, registered a .944 fielding average (while also playing some second base and shortstop) for the state champion PRCC Wildcats. The Gold Gloves were not awarded in 2020. The last Mississippi Division I player to win one was Mississippi State’s Jake Mangum in 2018. Former Southern Miss pitcher Hunter Stanley won one as a second baseman at Meridian CC that same year. Other campus notes: Dunhurst has been chosen for the USA Baseball Collegiate National Team, according to a UM release. Shortstop Jacob Gonzalez and pitcher Derek Diamond also made that squad. USA Baseball has not yet announced the full roster. … Southern Miss outfielder Reed Trimble, a Collegiate Baseball Freshman All-America pick, is one of four Golden Eagles playing for Gainesville (Ga.) in the Sunbelt Baseball League. USM pitcher Ben Ethridge is with the Bourne Braves in the Cape Cod League. Former USM star Walker Powell, the C-USA pitcher of the year in 2021, is in the MLB Draft League, a new showcase for draft-eligible players. … Jackson State’s Chenar Brown, also a CB Freshman All-America, is toiling for Danville in the Appalachian League. … Former Madison Central High star – and Stanford signee — Braden Montgomery is listed as an attendee in the MLB Draft Combine, currently under way in Cary, N.C. Montgomery, a pitcher/outfielder, is the only Mississippi high school player rated in MLB Pipeline’s top 250 draft prospects. The draft is in July.

11 Jun

summer session

The Cotton States League is back for 2021 with a whole new look. The wood-bat college summer league has added a Coastal division to go with its traditional New Albany-based North division. (There is also a high school league and a junior high league.) The Coastal teams, which began play last weekend, are the Biloxi Bacon, Gulfport Gamblers, Ocean Springs Ospreys, Bay St. Louis Seagulls, D’Iberville Dolphins and Pascagoula Pelicans. Games are being played at MGM Park, Biloxi High School and the AJ Holloway Sports Complex. The North, also just under way, includes the North Delta Dealers, Tupelo Thunder, Golden Triangle Jets, Woodall Mountain Lookouts, Tallahatchie Rascals, Tippah Tribe, BlackPrairie Mudcats and HillCountry Generals. North teams play at two fields at BNA Bank Park. … The Acadiana Cane Cutters of the Texas Collegiate League are stacked with Mississippi connections. Southern Miss’ Matthew Adams, Tanner Hall, Michael Latulas and Will Tynes, Ole Miss’ Ben Van Cleve, Belhaven’s Reed Vincent and Northwest Mississippi Community College’s Peyton Puckett are on the roster. The TCL season began this week. Tynes and Vincent pitched Thursday night. … The Cape Cod League, cancelled in 2020, opens its season on June 20, with a handful of Mississippi college players listed on the preliminary rosters. Bourne shows Mississippi State’s Will Bednar, Xavier Lovett and Cade Smith and Southern Miss’ Slade Wilks. Ole Miss’ Peyton Chatagnier and Derek Diamond are with Orleans. Falmouth has five state products: Bulldogs K.C. Hunt, Davis Rokose, Landon Sims and Mikey Tepper along with Bryson Ware, a Pearl River Community College alum now at Auburn. P.S. In the wake of the cancellation of the college season in 2020, several new summer leagues – Southeast Collegiate, Deep South Collegiate, Honor the Game — sprang up around the state, but it’s unclear if any will operate this year.

06 Aug

cuts like a knife

Former George County High standout Justin Steele’s major league debut will have to wait. Added to the Chicago Cubs’ 30-man active roster on Sunday, the left-hander – drafted in 2014 — was sent back to the alternate camp today, when rosters were cut to 28. Also shipped out was Ole Miss product Jacob Waguespack, who had not allowed an earned run in three relief appearances for Toronto. Former Ole Miss star Bobby Wahl and Southern Miss alumnus Cody Carroll had previously been sent out by Milwaukee and Baltimore, respectively. Also missing from Opening Day rosters: East Central Community College product Tim Anderson, the 2019 American League batting champ, is on the injured list (groin injury) for the Chicago White Sox, where he was joined this week by Mississippi State alum Kendall Graveman (neck), who scuffled in his first two starts for Seattle this season as he returns from 2018 Tommy John surgery. In other news: Taylorsville’s Billy Hamilton made his New York Mets debut on Wednesday, going 0-for-4 as the center fielder. … Former Mississippi Braves catcher Joe Odom made his big league debut for Seattle on July 28, then went back to the alternate camp on Aug. 2. … Southern Miss’ Chandler Best finished 2-2 with a 1.99 ERA for the Acadiana Cane Cutters, a Texas Collegiate League team that featured several Mississippi connections. A rising sophomore left-hander, Best ranked second in the college summer league with 33 strikeouts. Fellow USM pitcher Mathew Adams had a 5.78 ERA in 12 appearances; Ole Miss’ Drew McDaniel a 7.36 in five games; and Belhaven’s Reed Vincent a 4.62 in eight games. Trace Henry, a former Jones Junior College star from Mooreville, was one of the league’s top hitters at .341. USM’s Billy Garrity hit .213 in limited at-bats. … Ole Miss’ Gunnar Hoglund, a right-hander with mid-90s stuff, is rated the No. 14 draft prospect for 2021 by MLB Pipeline. He was a first-round supplemental pick out of a Florida high school in 2018. … The Hattiesburg Black Sox rebounded from a tough loss to win their second game in the National Baseball Congress World Series, the double-elimination event in Kansas. The Black Sox, the state’s semi-pro champs, play the Hutchinson Monarchs tonight. Pablo Lanzarote, a former Hinds Community College star, homered for the second straight game to help the Black Sox beat the Denver Cougars 9-4. Marcus Ragan, an East Mississippi CC alum, and Jamal Washington drove in two runs each for Hattiesburg, and Austin Sanders, another Hinds CC product, picked up the win.

03 Aug

high cotton

Outstanding pitching and some hot hitting from Chris Swanberg powered the DeSoto Xplorers to the Cotton States League championship in New Albany over the weekend. The Xplorers beat the HillCountry Generals 10-3 on Sunday in the title game of the college summer league, which featured 10 teams this year. Swanberg, who plays at Memphis, went 4-for-4 in the final, driving in two runs and scoring two. Zack Coon, a Blue Mountain College player, drove in three runs. Blue Mountain alums Adam Dill and Jackson Vance combined on a three-hitter for the Xplorers. In their first-round game, the Xplorers got a four-hit shutout and 14 strikeouts from Sam McMillin, and Alabama State product Austin King tossed a three-hit shutout with 13 K’s in their semifinal win. HillCountry beat the top-seeded North Delta Dealers in the semis as Eli Jackson, another Blue Mountain alum, homered and drove in five runs. … Team McCarty, managed by former Southern Miss and current pro pitcher Kirk McCarty, won the inaugural Deep South Collegiate League tournament over the weekend.

31 Jul

summer’s end

The Magnolia State will be represented in the venerable National Baseball Congress World Series this year. The Hattiesburg Black Sox, champions of the Mississippi Baseball Congress (semi-pro) state tournament, are among the 13 teams from five states invited to play in the Kansas-based NBC event, which starts Aug. 3. The Black Sox open the double-elimination tourney against the Colorado Cyclones in Hutchinson. Some games are also being played at Wichita State’s Eck Stadium. The Black Sox won the state title – their third in a row — last weekend, beating the Jackson 96ers 5-2 in the final at Vicksburg’s Sports Force Parks on the Mississippi. Tournament MVP Casey Echols, a former Hinds Community College and Mississippi College standout, drove in two runs for the Black Sox. Hinds CC alum Justin Smith had an RBI, and ex-Warren Central and East Mississippi CC star Marcus Ragan scored the game’s first run. Delta State product Layne Tedder got the win and Clyde Kendrick, a former Texas Rangers farmhand from Vicksburg, notched the save. “These are guys that should be playing on TV,” Black Sox coach Trey Aby told the Vicksburg Post. … The Cotton States League’s postseason tournament starts tonight when the Black Prairie Mudcats play the Golden Triangle Jets and the Tallahatchie Rascals meet the Toccopola SwampMonsters in the opening round in New Albany. Round 2 of the 10-team event is Saturday. The North Delta Dealers are the top seed after a 13-3 season led by Alex Frillman (Holmes Community College), who hit .450; Dylan Hale (Northwest CC), a .405 hitter with 21 RBIs; and Walker Johnson (East Central), who is 2-0, 3.24 ERA. The Woodall Mountain Lookouts (12-6) are the 2-seed. Trace White (Delta State) batted a league-best .455 for the Lookouts. … The Deep South Collegiate League’s eight-team playoffs were slated to start Wednesday and Thursday in Poplarville and Petal. Seven Southern Miss players participated in the first-year league, including Gabe Montenegro, Hunter Stanley and Reed Trimble.

10 Jul

there and here

San Francisco has placed Billy Hamilton, the former Taylorsville High star, on the injured list for what was described only as “medical purposes.” Hamilton is in the Giants’ camp on a minor league deal but was expected to make the active roster before the season begins. Reports were unclear on when he might be able to come off the IL. The 29-year-old outfielder is a .242 career hitter with 299 steals over seven big league seasons. … Milwaukee has added former Mississippi State star Ethan Small and Ole Miss alum Thomas Dillard, both 2019 draft picks, to its 60-man pool of eligible players for summer camp. Small, a left-hander picked in the first round, is the Brewers’ No. 2 prospect; he made seven appearances in the low minors last summer. Dillard, a catcher and a fifth-rounder, batted .249 with seven homers in his first pro season. … Adam Moncure is among the hottest hitters in the Cotton States League, batting .400 (.581 on-base) with two homers and a league-best 12 RBIs in nine games for the Black Prairie Mudcats. Moncure, from Clinton, hit .341 as a freshman at Meridian Community College in 2020. Blue Mountain native Sam McMillin, a left-hander at Union University, is 2-0 with a 0.00 ERA and 31 strikeouts in 19 innings for the CSL’s DeSoto Xplorers. … Luther Woullard, a former Jones (Junior) College star from d’Iberville, is playing for the Macon Bacon of the Coastal Plain League, a high-level college summer circuit. As a senior at New Orleans in 2020, Woullard batted .381 with 14 RBIs before the season was halted. He’ll have a year of eligibility left at UNO. Woullard was an All-MACJC outfielder who put up big numbers on some outstanding Jones teams in 2017-18. … Aiden Moffett of Taylorsville High has committed to LSU, per the Laurel Leader-Call. Though he was not highly recruited during his abbreviated sophomore year, Moffett has turned heads with his summer team. Playing for the Louisiana Knights, a travel team based in Mandeville, right-hander Moffett reportedly received offers from Southern Miss, Texas A&M and LSU over the course of just one weekend. … Former Mississippi Braves manager Brian Snitker, who’ll be deploying a DH in every game as Atlanta’s skipper this season, told espn.com that he once asked Bobby Cox about managing with the DH. “Get a bag of balls and sit on it, watch the game,” Cox told him.

11 Jun

a little draft drama

A handful of in-state players could be picked during the four rounds of Day 2 of the MLB draft, but none carries more intrigue than J.T. Ginn or Blaze Jordan. Right-hander Ginn, a sophomore-eligible at Mississippi State, is listed by ESPN as the fifth-best player available today. Jordan, a senior infielder out of DeSoto Central High, is, at No. 42, among mlb.com’s top 10 rated prospects still available. (Ginn is No. 44 on mlb.com’s chart.) Ginn’s situation is clouded by the fact he had Tommy John surgery in March. He was drafted 30th overall in 2018 as a two-way star at Brandon High but passed on a $2 million bonus to play at State. He had a strong freshman year – 8-4, 3.17 ERA – but began to develop an arm problem, which ultimately led to the surgery. That could impact the signing bonus he’ll be offered if he’s drafted today. Plus, he has three years of eligibility left at State, so he might just decide to stay in school. Jordan has been on pro scouts’ radar for several years; he famously slugged a 500-foot home run in a contest when he was 13. Now 17, he is listed at 6 feet 2, 220 pounds. His power potential is unquestioned. His ability to make consistent contact reportedly might be an issue. He played a lot of third base at DeSoto and in summer ball but may be better suited to first. Jordan is an MSU signee and could well wind up in Starkville if he slides to, say, the fourth or fifth round. P.S. A third in-state college summer league is set to get underway on Saturday when the Deep South Collegiate League debuts in Laurel. The DSCL, organized by Gulfport High assistant coach Colton Caver, will play the rest of its schedule at Pearl River Community College in Poplarville and Columbia High. … The New Albany-based Cotton States League opened its 12th season on June 5. The wood-bat college summer league has 10 teams this year, up from six in 2019. … The new Southeast Collegiate League, based in Jackson, Hattiesburg and Baton Rouge, La., was scheduled to start play this week. The SECL is also slated to play some games at PRCC’s field.