Gamecocks walk-off Mississippi State to halt SEC losing streak
Jeff Heinrich paused for a moment near second base as the ball off David Mendham’s bat floated through the air, inching closer to the centerfield wall.
The pause didn’t last long with the ball getting over the centerfielder’s head and bounding around the warning track, and all that was left to do was hustle.
Heinrich slid into home, getting nailed by the ball on the backside, but it didn’t matter. The Gamecocks had completed the comeback, walking off Mississippi State 4-3 in 11 innings to end a six-game SEC losing streak and salvage a game in the series.
“The hope is it’s very similar to that Vanderbilt Sunday win. I think we won eight out of nine after that in a row. Baseball’s a streaky game. You go through ups and downs. You have to keep fighting. It’s still one game at a time,” Mark Kingston said. “Some games have a little more meaning off the field in terms of what they can do off the field for a team and its mindset.”
At times it looked bleak for the Gamecocks (28-17, 12-12 SEC), missing opportunity after opportunity to either tie or take the lead in the middle innings, stranding 11 batters between the third and eighth innings, including loading the bases twice but getting nothing out of it.
Brett Kerry, who tossed six innings of one-run baseball, kept the Gamecocks in it and allowed for the ninth-inning magic to happen.
With one out, Heinrich pinch-hit and poked a game-tying double down the right field line and, two innings later, it was him again starting the action with a single before Mendham doubled him home, both hits to the opposite field.
“It was awesome. It’s a big team win to get some momentum going. It was funny,” said Mendham, who also hit a two-run homer . “Right before Jeff’s at-bat I was like, ‘C’mon. Me and you. Let’s get it started.’ And it went right as planned. It was weird but it was cool.”
Heinrich, who hadn’t started in over a month and didn’t have a SEC hit since March 28 against Florida, finished the day a perfect 2-for-2 while driving in the tying run and scoring the winning one.
“He hasn’t had the kind of year he wanted to have or we wanted him to have, but he’s had a really good attitude about it. He’s been working hard and waiting for opportunities and he got his opportunity today,” Kingston said.
“You can mope about not playing or you can try and stay ready so if you get an opportunity you’re actually ready and productive and make our decision a lot harder in the future. That’s what he did.”
After Thomas Farr was pulled in the fifth after giving up a game-tying home run, Kerry came in and shut things down for six innings.
He’d allow one run—a solo shot from Rowdey Jordan—but didn’t give up a run the final four innings of his outing, scattering four hits with six strikeouts and two walks.
“My fastball was definitely working command-wise and being able to elevate it,” Kerry said. “I had pretty good control with my slider other than the one miss Rowdey hit really well. Those two pitches were working really well for me.”
The Gamecocks end a six-game losing streak in the SEC with the win and move up now to No. 12 in the RPI with six league games left to go as the Gamecocks jockey for postseason positioning.
“We got each other’s backs,” Kerry said. “We’re rallying together. It might not have shown the last couple weeks, but we definitely got some fight in us. I can see it on our guys’ eyes. We’re ready to go.”
