When South Carolina is needing to win SEC series, it’s games like this that prove why that hasn’t happened consistently.
With a chance to clinch a series victory, the Gamecocks blew a 6-1 lead, fell behind 12-6, cut the lead down to one, then lost 15-13 to Kentucky on Saturday. It’s just one of those games they shouldn’t have lost.
Here are my takes from the loss.
Pitching was a letdown
When your offense scores six runs in the first inning and you have your ace on the mound, you should be in the driver’s seat. Instead, Eli Jones just didn’t have his best stuff and coughed up the lead.
The right-hander pitched 3.2 innings and gave up four earned runs on seven hits. His outing was fine until he was bitten twice by the home run ball in the fourth inning. It’s the second straight outing where he hasn’t been able to provide a ton of length and that’s not great as the ace on staff.
Matthew Becker came in after him and didn’t fare much better. He gave up five runs on four hits in only one inning of work. His numbers became more inflated after Tyler Pitzer gave up a few more runs to add to Becker’s total.
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Trailing by one in the ninth, Parker Marlatt came back out for a second inning of work, which didn’t work out as planned. Kentucky scored three more runs to take a 15-11 lead. It was the cherry on top to a disastrous day for the pitching staff.
When it comes down to it, South Carolina wins this game without question if the pitching were better. It’s disappointing because the offense did way more than enough to win the game.
Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy
If there’s one play that summarizes this loss, let’s jump to the fourth inning with the game tied at six. Matthew Becker just came in to relieve Jones and try to work out of his mess.
Becker gets ready to fire an 0-2 pitch to Nick Lopez with one out to go. As he semi-crouches down, Grant Smith stole home without a throw, giving the Wildcats a 7-6 lead.
After the game, Mark Kingston said they knew had “some gadget plays like that” and were “prepared for them.” But I’m not sure anyone was prepared for Kentucky to steal home. I mean, it looked like no one saw it coming. And that’s a problem considering no one was ready for it until the runner was basically home.
But outside of that, there were other issues for the Gamecocks. With a pretty much entirely new defensive alignment in the infield, Parker Noland was the only mainstay at second base. And his defense was shaky at best on Saturday. He let multiple hard ground balls go by him, which tends to happen a bit, and then he couldn’t camp under a high pop up in shallow right between first and second base.
It’s not just his fault, though. At the end of the day, this is a team sport and a lot went wrong for South Carolina to lose this game.
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Turn the page and win the series today
Despite the problems of Saturday, South Carolina still has a chance to right its wrongs. The Gamecocks will go for the series win over Kentucky on Sunday afternoon (3 p.m., SECN).
The good news is that the offense seems to be on the right track. They immediately scored six runs in the first inning on Saturday, all with two outs. Then after falling behind, they fought back to make it a one-run game in the eighth. In the ninth, they were literally a few feet away from winning the game on another improbable walk-off. That’s baseball.
But when you score 13 runs, you should win. So if South Carolina can hit like that again on Sunday, it should take care of business. But that’s assuming the pitching does their part. No starting pitcher has been named yet, but there aren’t many options left, so Dylan Eskew might be the best choice.
Whether you want to admit it or not, there is so much on the line today. To say the Gamecocks need to win this game would be an understatement. They need to win this series as bad as ever. Dropping another winnable series would be a major blow to this season.
With only three weekends to go after this, they have to have this game today. Win this series and you’re helping solidify your case to host a regional in the NCAA Tournament. If not, it’s going to be real tough to go on the road two of the next three weekends and come away with series victories.
The post Jack’s takes from South Carolina’s 15-13 loss to Kentucky appeared first on On3 .
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