It had been 715 days since Missouri baseball had last tasted a Southeastern Conference victory at Taylor Stadium. 1,491 days marked the last time the Tigers had bested Arkansas. Both of those streaks ended in Mizzou’s 6-0 victory on Saturday afternoon at Taylor Stadium.
Another monkey off the Tigers’ back? Their recent nine-game losing streak, which included eight losses in SEC play and one to in-state opposition, SIUE, reached its ultimate conclusion.
Based on this series alone, it would be easy for Tigers fans to anticipate or even triangulate what could go wrong after the first inning. After all, the Tigers’ 5-4 defeat in the series opener came after an early inning that included a pair of homers from Jase Woita and Blaize Ward. This game was different.
Right out of the blocks, Missouri’s offense sprinted out like Usain Bolt, starting with back-to-back singles from Woita and Durnin. A walk surrendered to Blaize Ward loaded the bases with nobody out, and Mateo Serna was hit by a pitch, which was not the most conventional way to put the first run of the game.
Kaden Peer reached base on a fielder’s choice, and Donovan Jordan’s groundout drove two more runs across the plate, giving the Tigers more hits and runs than they accumulated all of Friday evening against the Razorbacks pitching.
SEALS AND MAISONET MAKING IMPACT IN STYLE
The second inning came along, starting with an infield single by Eric Maisonet. Then walked up Pierre Seals. It had been one month and three days since the last time he had gone yard. That changed two pitches into his at-bat against Colin Fisher.
Seals watched, stood, and flipped his bat, and he slowly moved down the first-base line, knowing he had gotten much more than enough of the ball for it to travel out of Taylor Stadium. 425 feet over the left field wall to be exact, giving Mizzou a 5-0 cushion in the bottom half of the second.
“We all come up with all of these cool celebrations to do, and that’s great,” Jackson said. “The thing that was most important for me, he finally got the barrel on it. He’s a guy who’s constantly hitting things to the backside. When you have that power that he does and the bat speed he does, if he can get the barrel out more consistently, you’re gonna see more of that.”
As Jackson pointed out post-game, Seals, despite having hit four homers this year, has proven to be a power bat for the Tigers in Blue, Memphis. 10 home runs, 65 hits, and 33 RBI prove Seals can be a potent hitter when aggressively hitting towards the middle of the field.
On a day where the Tigers broke lots of negative streaks, Seals’ home run drought ended, as well as collecting a hit a piece over the last two games. after previously going hitless in his previous five.
“[Hitting the homer] was definitely big, because I feel like I’ve been hitting balls hard in the past couple of weeks and I didn’t have anything to show for it,” Seals said. “I kept going and kept my approach, and it was good to see it pay off.”
Eric Masionet, who wasn’t necessarily high in the home run column for Missouri this season coming into Saturday afternoon, made his mark in the bottom of the fourth. After connecting on a 1-0 pitch from Gabe Geckle, which admittedly didn’t look like it was leaving the yard, kept carrying.
Damian Ruiz jumped at the left field wall, the ball hit the top of the padding, and then the left field scoreboard. The Tigers were well and truly in the driver’s seat, up 6-0 in the bottom half of the fourth and hitting like a team that hadn’t been at the plate in nine games. No trepidation in the box, aggressive and having nothing to lose and everything to gain from besting a top-25 team in the country.
GONZALEZ AND VILLAREAL PUT UP ZEROS OVER 7.2 INNINGS
Gonzalez and Villareal stepped up not to the plate, but to the mound after an early re-aggravated injury occurred to Missouri’s starting pitcher JD Dohrman in the top of the second inning.
“Its a groin injury,” Jackson said. “If it’s something you keep messing with it’ll never heal and he wasn’t quite feeling 100 percent so it’s better for us to pull him out and try to continue to put him on that rehab stretch and get him completely healed.”
Gonzalez took Mizzou fans back to his outing earlier this month against an offensive powerhouse in Missouri State. Similar to his performance against the Bears, Gonzalez allowed zero earned runs and struck out a multitude of batters.
Gonzalez also became a U.S citizen earlier in the week and earning the victory after tossing five shutout innings capped off the series of good events for the right-hander.
“Its been a long process, Gonzalez said ”I came from Cuba, and, you know, got here to United States, and it was a long process, but being able to become a US citizen, it’s great. This country’s giving me everything, so I’m super happy and proud.“
Villarreal took over for Gonzalez after the sixth inning and continued the dominant outing from the Tigers relief staff. Villareal struck out three Razorbacks and pitched into the bottom of the ninth inning before surrendering a run and the bases being full of runners.
Jackson made the switch to the right-hander Sam Rosand, who’strikeout officially ended the long negative runs but not the work of playing more consistent baseball for Jackson.
“The relief for me is that we played good baseball, ”That’s the relief, regardless of if we would have not won or, like, I felt good on Thursday night because I thought we played good baseball. For me its ultimately it did we play good baseball, and by playing good baseball, can we continue to play good baseball… Yes I’m glad the streak is over but at the end of the day you can’t control whether you win or lose. If we do this consistently we’re going to win more than we lose.“
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