Happy Friday College Baseball fans! We are back with another bet for today's slate. We took a few weeks off to focus on the start of MLB and we backed off College Baseball volume as it can be wildly unpredictable during conference play, especially the college bullpens.
For today's pick we head to Starkville, Mississippi! Best of luck this weekend, folks!
Khal Stephan Has Performed Extremely Well on Friday's
In today's matchup Mississippi State (23-14, 7-8 SEC) welcomes in Auburn (19-17, 2-13 SEC) for their three-game series. Mississippi State is 2/5 in SEC series, but 2-0 at home, taking 2/3 from Georgia, and 2/3 from LSU, winning both Friday games, which is always the most pivotal.
One change that has impressed me with this squad was moving Khal Stephan from Saturday starter to Friday starter for the Texas AM series. State has won 3 out of his 4 starts on Friday night, with their only loss coming with a bullpen meltdown, to none other than Florida (who has 7 SEC wins, all by comeback!).
Stephan has pitched phenomenally in his last 4 games as the Friday starter going 27.1 innings, 16 hits, 4 runs, 7 walks, and 20 Ks. He has been their best starter this season, holding a 2.84 ERA, 0.97 WHIP, .201 batting average, in 50.2 innings pitched.
He faces an Auburn squad hitting .272, with only 2 SEC wins and they are 1-6 on the road. Stephan usually goes deep, in 7 of 9 starts this season he has gone 6 innings, and in two games he went 7 and 8. In all 7 of those games he allowed a stellar 2 runs or less!
Fade Fade Fade Auburn Pitching
Auburn is starting Dylan Watts, who holds a 5.94 ERA, 1.68 WHIP, .357 batting average, in 10 appearances, 2 starts, and 16.2 total innings. It is a head scratcher why they are starting him when they do have other choices.
Auburn's pitching has not been very good this season, which is why their record in SEC play has been so down. It will be interesting to see how Watts handles this Mississippi St team led by Dakota Jordan (.377), David Merson (.328), and Connor Hujsak (.317). State is hitting .282 as a team and averaging 8.5 runs per game at home.
Mississippi State Needs A Sweep Here
One big thing to note is Mississippi State has had to look ahead a bit, or their coaches have, and they know they need to win this series, and possibly sweep, if they can. They have a gauntlet ahead of them, at Vanderbilt (3-game series), Ole Miss (rivalry weekday game), home vs Alabama (3-game series), and then at Arkansas (3-game series), before they end their season vs the worst team in the SEC (Missouri).
Mississippi State needs to make some ground up on Arkansas and Texas A&M, though they are very behind currently in the standings. If they want to make a run in the conference tourney, the time is now to build up confidence going into the second half of conference play!
My Best Bet: Mississippi State ML (-140)
