Ole Miss Baseball Check-In

How are the defending national champions faring at mid-season? Badly.

Ole Miss is last in the SEC, as in, dead last with a 5-18 conference record, and this weekend the SEC Eastern division basement dweller Missouri has already taken a series at Oxford. It is bad.

What happened? As far as I can tell, pitching. Last year’s ace Dylan Delucia went pro with the Cleveland baseball team. He was a junior, so he had a year left, but he’s playing minor league ball now. Hunter Elliott, who was my favorite ace from last year with his deft pick-off move to first base, started the season opener against Delaware and recorded a win, but then he disappeared for a couple of months only to resurface with a start on April 22 against division leader LSU. He gave up five hits, and the Rebels dropped the game 7-3. This past Thursday May 4th Ole Miss issued a statement that Elliott had gone under the knife to repair his elbow. It was Tommy Johns surgery, which is reattaching a ligament in the elbow. Unfortunate. He might not be available even next season because the healing time is a year or so for Tommy Johns.

The Rebs just don’t have any pitching.