Friday the 13th? I mean, we just beat Vandy in Nashville

The Rebels and Commodores got together in Nashville, TN tonight to determine their identities. Really, neither team knows who it is. This is what the teams showed tonight:

Ole Miss:

We've now got a Friday night guy in Drew Pomeranz. He had a solid night tonight going four innings and only giving up two runs. My only concern is the five walks he issued tonight. McKean went three innings and gave up a run. Morgan and Barbeck both worked one inning and only allowed one hit a piece.

So, I'd say our bullpen is solid. We did commit two errors, but I will give the defense a pass due to the awful weather.

As far as our offense is concerned, we are impressive. We got to Mike Minor tonight which is something no team has done this year. He started really strong by only allowing one hit through 19 batters faced, but he lost control and ended up getting the loss. Tyler Hill was impressive in relief, and he had 8k's.

We scored 9 runs on 12 hits, and that production came mostly in bunches. We scored 4 in the 4th, and 3 of those came on a Travis homerun. We scored 3 more in the 6th on a bases loaded, two-out double from Logan Power. This season, Power is batting 1.000 with the bases loaded. CLUTCH

Vanderbilt:

They are a different team from last year. They haven't shown the power they have had in the past without Flaherty and Alvarez in the line-up. The want to play small ball, but they cannot string the hits together.

Their pitching has had a solid season until tonight, but I bet they get it together by the next game.

My thoughts:

Ole Miss showed some guts tonight by getting the first one under the belt against Vandy. I personally think the game tomorrow will be postponed due to weather, and we can expect a double header on Sunday. As someone commented on a earlier, free streaming video is available through the Vanderbilt site. If you feel I left important information out of this post, feel free to comment and add one.

This just in....

The new weekend rotation for the Rebel Baseball team will be:

Drew Pomeranz on Friday
Philip Irwin on Saturday
Aaron Barrett on Sunday


The Rebels will take on the Governors of Austin Peay at 6:30 on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Final: Ole Miss 11 Arky State 5

Ole Miss scored a very efficient 11 runs on only nine hits on their way to beating Arkansas State Tuesday night.

Drew Pomeranz and Phillip Irwin combined for 6 innings only giving up 2 runs in the victory.

Jeremy Travis hit a three run home run that got the Rebels ahead 6-2, and the Indians didn't mount a rally until late in the game against Nathan Baker.

Jordan Henry didn't start tonight as Taylor Hashman took over in LF. Henry struggled early last year, but after being benched in the middle of the season, he got hot through the SEC tournament. Before Tuesday, Henry was batting an anemic .211 but was sporting a .464 on base percentage. Hashman was batting .333 with a .538 OBP. I don't know if we'll have some sort of platoon OF now, but Bianco could be trying out players in other positions as Travis is a big bat with a mediocre arm.

We should've won by this margin and we did, must like last week's wins against Central Arkansas with 10-2 and 11-3 decisions. The Rebels have now scored 10 or more runs in five of their seven games. Unfortunately, they're 3-2 when scoring 10 or more runs, which means obviously that our pitching can't stop the bleeding or Mike Bianco is too stubborn to change a pitching plan mid-game.

Next up, we've got the Vermont Catamounts for a weekend series then Austin Peay in a two game mid-week series.

In my opinion, we need to win all of these games to get back on track and meet the expectations of the fan base. Ripping off five wins here in preparation for conference play would put our team at 9-3 with 12 non-conference games and 30 conference games to play. There doesn't seem to be any plan to make up the two games canceled with TCU, so we've got 54 games for the year now.

We'll have a preview of the Vermont series on Friday once we know who the weekend starters will be, but seriously, Mike Bianco probably won't make any changes. This team needs to get on a roll and build up some confidence after a rocky start.

Ole Miss baseball: We've missed you...a little bit

The grass at Swayze is getting that near Spring green hue to it even though temperatures aren't quite right for sitting leisurely in the stands. Baseball is very nearly here, but let's not forget the shortcomings of last year's team before we look at next year.

With Lance Lynn and Cody Satterwhite as our 1-2 punch on the weekends, there should have been a good chance to make it to Omaha. These guys had been with the program for a couple years and were going to lead us to the promised land. Unfortunately, there just weren't enough bats in the line-up last year along with Satterwhite's pitching inconsistencies that settled the Rebels into an uncomfortable situation, making it to the Coral Gables regional against one of the strongest college baseball programs- the Miami Hurricanes. We won't relive all of the gory details, but with the return of Scott Bittle, I have a feeling that fans are thinking this could be a strong team yet again. That feeling is raw common sense.

Let's take a gander at pitching first.

Bittle was awarded the best player in the state award last year by Cellular South. He's got a pitch called "The Thing" and has been the closer for the past two years with a few spot starts from time to time. Bittle's finishing pitch drops as it approaches the plate and bears strong resemblance to Rick "Wild Thing" Vaughn's "Decimator." When the ball is in his hands late in the game, early in the game or at any point, I'm confident he'll get the outs needed to keep Ole Miss in the game.

Along with the Bittler comes Drew Pomeranz, one of the great freshmen from last year's team who struck out over 80 in 70 innings while only walking 30. Pomeranz took over in mid-season for Satterwhite in the weekend rotation and went through some freshmen growing pains. He got a DUI during the offseason, but as Mark Wright proved, you can still have a decent college career and move on to obscurity. Pomeranz should be the Friday starter in my opinion to give him a great chance to prove his worth, develop his stuff and prepare for next season when he'll be the go-to guy.

Phillip Irwin hasn't gotten a lot of pub, not only because he's only got about 35 innings to his credit at Ole Miss, but they aren't really fantastic innings either. He was used mainly in relief roles last year but did have a couple starts and should compete for a weekend role if he's improved in the offseason. 

Aaron "Erik the Red" Barrett and Kyle Barbeck are two new faces to the Rebel pitching staff that will get playing time early on. Barrett is a juco transfer that was drafted in the 20th round by the Minnesota Twins. He's going to be looking to improve his draft stock in one year and will push for PT. Barbeck is a freshman southpaw from Missouri who had a Maddux like ERA through high school. He could be one of our pitchers who grabs a mid-week start against teams like Central Arkansas or Belmont. 

Brett Bukvich and Nathan Baker will battle it out for a weekend spot as well as two names who Rebel fans should be fairly familiar with. I'm not crazy about either one, but I'd feel better about having Baker on the mound as Bukvich might have a Tommy Baumgardner-like senior year. 

Weekend rotation we'd like to see:

Friday: Drew Pomeranz- L, Soph.

Saturday: Nathan Baker- L, Jr.

Sunday: Aaron Barrett- R, Jr.

Next up: A look at the other end of the frame- hitting. 

P.S. We won't necessarily miss Cody Overbeck.