MSU Baseball Falls in Midweek Road Game at South Alabama

MOBILE, Ala. (WCBI/MSU Athletics) – No. 11 Mississippi State got the offense going late but could not score enough during a 5-2 loss to South Alabama in college baseball action Tuesday night at Eddie Stanky Field.

South Alabama (22-15) scored three times in the fifth inning and added insurance scores in the seventh and eighth innings. MSU (25-14) scored its only runs during a two-run eighth inning.

“We played uninspired baseball,” head coach Andy Cannizaro said. “We are going to play hard every game. That is why we had some position players pitch and some pitchers hit. That message had to be sent. We are going to have players play hard. We will head back to Starkville, get a good practice in Wednesday and get ready to go this weekend.”

The South Alabama pitching duo of Sean Trimble and Matt Peacock combined to hold MSU to three hits. The Bulldogs stranded six base runners.

For MSU, Peyton Plumlee drew the start, allowing one hit with four strikeouts over three innings of work. Parker Ford (0-1) worked a scoreless fourth inning but ran into trouble with back-to-back walks to start the fifth inning. Jacob Barton finished the inning but not before a pair of hits and a groundball out scored the runs.

Andrew Mahoney and Brant Blaylock were each touched for a run in an inning of relief work.

The Bulldogs scored twice in the eighth inning when a pair of errors reached a pair of runners. Brent Rooker and Ryan Gridley each hit a sacrifice fly.

Spencer Price, Dustin Skelton and Hunter Stovall each had a hit for the Bulldogs.

Trimble (2-0) threw 6.2 innings, allowing two hits and no runs, with five strikeouts. Peacock finished the contest with four strikeouts for his fifth save.

State will now return home to continue Southeastern Conference play with a three-game series vs. Alabama at Dudy Noble Field. The series will open with a nationally-televised contest on Thursday at 6 p.m. CT on SEC Network.