Mercer ready for key SoCon series against VMI with stretch run looming

In typically talented fashion, Mercer head baseball coach Craig Gibson is pretty sure he has a good group.

“It’s hard not to like the guys this season. We have a lot of upperclassmen who are good leaders for the younger players, and the younger players are stepping up and contributing,” Gibson said. “I really like what we have with this team, and we just have to play our best baseball for the stretch run.”

The Bears are the third-winningest team in the Southern Conference by overall record with a 19-11 mark so far this year, including a 15-8 record at home. They pieced together a nine-game winning streak early in the year and have not lost more than two consecutive games.

“We’ve played really good stretches, but we haven’t played our best baseball by any means,” Gibson said. “We’re just searching for a little bit more consistency.”

Certainly, the team has been explosive at times and underwhelming at others.

The Bears defeated No. 5 Florida State earlier this season in Tallahassee, a 9-3 victory that got attention on social media. They rumbled past strong conference opponent Western Carolina in the second leg of a doubleheader Saturday, winning 13-3 in seven innings.

A recent midweek game against Georgia State looked like a loss until star outfielder Ty Dalley smashed a go-ahead, walk-off home run that sent a jolt through the home crowd.

A key part of Mercer’s positive momentum has been shortstop Bradley Frye. The senior has elevated his game this year, hitting .385 through 30 games with an OPS over 1.000 to lead the team’s offense while offering dependable defense at a premium position.

“I’ve just been trying to keep it simple. It’s my senior year, so the mindset right now is to just go enjoy it and have fun with the boys,” Frye said. “When I’m most chill like that, it seems like it comes easier. It’s kind of a mindset of ‘whatever happens happens,’ and it’s brought me to my highest level.”

Frye has also embraced a leadership role as a senior.

“There’s a group of six of us older players that try to keep up with the young guys and get them adjusted, but we really don’t even think of them as freshmen anymore,” he said. “They’ve grown and the whole experience helped us become better players.”

Dalley, the SoCon’s Preseason Player of the Year, has also torn it up at the dish, hitting .283 with 11 home runs already.

“Having those guys in the middle of the order stabilizes us. You look at the Braves, I think they’re still winless,” Gibson told The Melody Wednesday. “Their guys in the middle of the order are struggling. For us, Ty and Bradley are nowhere near a problem that way… they’re great leaders.”

The flipside has been there, though. The first leg of that doubleheader with the Catamounts was a tough 7-3 loss, one that brought the Bears to 3-3 so far in the conference after they dropped two of three against The Citadel last month to open SoCon play.

“We need a little more length from our starting pitching, guys throwing into the sixth inning more. We feel really good about the pieces we have to close the game, but the bullpen can get stretched thin,” Gibson said. “We have guys hitting well, but we have the left field, catcher and DH spot that need to be more consistent for us.”

Gibson said that Mercer’s left field spot is coming around lately, but the catcher and DH positions have been “revolving doors” thus far. The see-sawing offense led to some fizzling performances when combined with inconsistent pitching.

The Bears most recently lost 21-5 on the road Tuesday against No. 25 Georgia Tech, failing to pull off another ranked upset, although Gibson was not particularly shocked by that result.

“We didn’t throw a lot of our premium arms because we’ll use them on Friday. We need to go up there and win that series,” Gibson said, referring to a three-game weekend set on the road against VMI this weekend.

The Keydets are 18-11 so far this year with a 3-3 SoCon record identical to Mercer’s. They kept it close with #10 Virginia early on and played a trio of barnburners against UNC-Greensboro, one of the conference’s stronger programs.

“They’re a good team, but really it’s about us. It doesn’t matter who we play, if we play to our potential we can beat anyone,” Gibson said.

VMI’s game centers more around base-stealing than perhaps any team in the conference, and possibly even in the country. The Keydets have swiped a whopping 148 bags in just 29 games so far, more than 50 steals ahead of the nation’s next-best team. (Another SoCon team, Wofford, happens to be in second with 98 steals.)

VMI has three players — Boston Torres, Bradley Garner and Owen Prince — hitting above .380. Prince has 38 steals, a number that leads the nation, and opposing catchers have only nabbed him eight times. His teammate, Kazuya Jordan, is third in the country with 26 steals and has not been caught yet.

“You can’t give up free passes, because they will take advantage… A big thing for us all season has been our holding time and our delivery time. If we can hold it and then get that thing across the plate in 1.3 seconds, we can limit them,” Gibson said. “They have a lot of guys, six or seven guys that will feast on that free pass if you’re not careful.”

If the Keydets have a weakness, however, it’s the men toeing the slab. Six pitchers have tossed more than 20 innings for VMI. Outside of ace Caden Plummer — who still has a 4.10 ERA, though a 1.10 WHIP indicates some bad luck there — no one in that group has an ERA lower than 4.85. Three of those regular pitchers have ERAs higher than 7.50.

If Mercer’s bats can click as they have at times this season, it could be a shootout in Virginia.

“People haven’t seen our best yet. That [13-3 win] against Western (Carolina), that’s what we can do when we’re really clicking, pedal to the metal, don’t stop. That’s how we played at Florida State,” Frye said. “That’s how we have to play every game the rest of the way… we need to play like there isn’t another game to play.”

The Bears take on VMI at 6 p.m. Friday in Lexington, Virginia. The Saturday game is scheduled for 2 p.m., with the Sunday series finale set for 1 p.m. All three games will stream on ESPN+.