Friday, March 9
Columbia, Mo.
6:30 p.m.
University of Missouri
vs
La Salle
@MizzouBaseball Hosts La Salle for Weekend Set
3/8/2018 1:03:00 PM | Baseball
Mizzou has won five straight and six of seven
- Mizzou Baseball continues its season-long nine-game homestand this weekend with a three-game series vs. La Salle, beginning Friday at 6:30 p.m. The Saturday contest begins at 2 p.m. and the series finale Sunday starts at 1 p.m. All three games will air live on SEC Network+ and KTGR. Mizzou's most recent contest vs. Eastern Illinois Tuesday was cancelled due to weather.
- Mizzou will send reigning SEC Pitcher of the Week and Louisville Slugger National Player of the Week Bryce Montes De Oca to the mound Friday night. MDO as he is affectionately known, has been virtually uninhabitable this season, allowing just six hits in 17.0 innings pitched, limiting batters to .111 hitting through his first three starts. MDO is coming off the best start of his career last Friday vs. UMBC, tossing the first 7.0 innings of a combined no-hitter, Mizzou's first since 2005. He struck out a career-high 12 batters and walked just two. In all, he allowed just two fly ball outs among the 21 he recorded and only one ball left the infield all night, a shallow pop-up that was gloved by SS Chris Cornelius. As good as his season numbers are, he has been even better over this last two starts. During that span, he is 2-0 with a 0.68 ERA and a .093 opponent batting average in 13.1 innings. He has struck out 20 in that span while walking just two, scattering only four hits.
- Mizzou enters the weekend having won five straight and six of seven and is coming off a three-game series sweep of UMBC, which included a Friday night no-hitter, Mizzou's first since 2005. La Salle, like Mizzou, has not played since last weekend when it was swept at Kansas State. All three games were competitive as La Salle was within one run at 4-3 in the middle of the seventh inning in the Friday night affair before falling, 9-3. K-State won the Saturday game, 11-10, in 11 innings after La Salle scored three in the top of the ninth to take a 9-8 lead before K-State rallied for the win. K-State needed two runs in the bottom of the eighth to put Sunday's game away, winning 5-1.
- Mizzou continues to draw walks at a torrid pace thanks to a very patient approach through the first 13 games. Mizzou has walked 91 times this season, trailing only Florida State (101) South Alabama (94) nationally. Mizzou is averaging seven walks per game, which averaged out over an entire 56-game season would be 394. The school record for walks in a season 384 in 1996. Sophomore 1B/CF Kameron Misner leads the way with 20 walks, also the second-best mark in the nation. He trails only South Alabama's Travis Swaggerty. Misner drew just 23 walks during his Freshman All-America season a year ago as he has already almost surpassed that total this season.
- After the first three weeks of play, Mizzou has found itself in some pretty elite company. The Tigers are one of only nine teams that rank in the top 30 nationally in runs scored (10th) and ERA (23rd). Five of the nine teams come from the SEC - Mizzou, Florida, Arkansas, Vanderbilt and Texas A&M - while the other eight teams all rank in the USA Today Top 25 Coaches Poll, with six of the nine ranked in the top 10 nationally.
- Mizzou is second in the SEC and 11th nationally with 134 batters struck out this season. Mizzou also boasts top-25 marks nationally in ERA (23rd), hits allowed (25th), shutouts (third), K-BB ratio (22nd) and WHIP (25th) as the pitching has shined under first-year pitching coach Fred Corral.
PROJECTED ROTATION
- Friday: RHP Bryce Montes De Oca (2-0, 0.53 ERA) vs. RHP Michael Jenkins (0-0, 3.72 ERA)
- Saturday: LHP Michael Plassmeyer (1-0, 4.81 ERA) vs. RHP Colin Kennedy (0-1, 7.30 ERA)
- Sunday: RHP Andy Toelken (1-1, 5.52 ERA) vs. RHP Matt Holt (0-2, 4.11 ERA)
Players Mentioned
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