Mizzou baseball searching for consistency ahead of visit to No. 10 Arkansas Friday
March 14, 2019 | Sports,
Mizzou Baseball started off on the rocky side of things in the 2019 season, to say the least.
Since then, the season has taken a turn. It swept the series against the Northwestern this past weekend and blew Arkansas State out of the water in a two-game set.
Before the series, Head Coach Steve Bieser didn’t mince words regarding the performance of the team. Needless to say, he was disappointed.
“We’re 6-5, we could easily be 9-2,” Bieser said. “I think the only game we got beat was the South Dakota State game, they just played better than we did for whatever reason.”
He reminisced on the few opening series where they had a lead late in the game and lost that lead multiple times in just one or two innings.
“We’ve had a three-run lead going into the seventh inning multiple times and our bullpen gives it up,” Bieser said.
Bieser knows this is something that needs to stop if this team wants to advance into postseason play. He thinks all aspects of the team need to and can improve. The team needs its best players to step up and do more.
“The Kameron Misner’s, the Chris Cornelius’, you may think I’m crazy, but they can do more than what they’re doing right now,” Bieser said. His advice to the team is, “we’ve got to hit with runners in scoring position, we’ve got to hit in runs and we need to lean on everybody in that lineup.”
Sophomore catcher Chad McDaniel agrees with Bieser in the sense that the team needs to change something now if they have any chance of improving their record and going into the postseason.
“We need to play our hardest and have confidence in whatever we do,” McDaniel said.
That’s McDaniel’s advice to the entire team, specifically the freshman starters. He knows some of his teammates can get timid when out on the field, but he knows they’re at their full potential when they are confident in themselves.
Meanwhile, Junior pitcher Jacob Cantleberry has been very focused on working on his pitches to provide a steady arm for the team. He is well known for his effective changeup- even McDaniel said it took him a while to get used to catching it.
“It’s one of the best changeup’s I’ve ever seen. It’s very unpredictable,” McDaniel said.
“We don’t really know why it does what it does,” Cantleberry joked. “but we’ve been playing around with it. It’s always been my bread and butter and it’s a weird pitch for sure. It plays like a knuckle ball sometimes.”
With the team now on a five game win streak, they move on to SEC play against No. 10 Arkansas in Fayetteville this weekend.
Edited by Garrett Jones | gcjh23@mail.missouri.edu