No morale lost: Ole Miss bullpen remains confident despite tough couple of recent outings

OXFORD — For most of the 2019 season, Ole Miss baseball's bullpen has been among the most reliable in the nation. Over the past two weeks, the Rebels' back-end pitchers just haven't been as reliable. 

Counting the Rebels' 8-5 loss on Saturday night versus Mississippi State, Ole Miss has used eight bullpen arms to throw 15 innings in the Rebels' last five games. Those eight pitchers have combined to post a 12.00 ERA and a 2.00 WHIP in those five contests. And Saturday, when the Rebels' bullpen gave up six runs in the seventh inning to blow a two-run lead, Ole Miss lost a game when leading after the sixth inning for the first time in 26 such instances this year.

To be fair, two of these five games have featured clean bullpen performances. In the Game 2 win over LSU last Saturday, Ole Miss' relief aces Austin Miller and Parker Caracci combined to throw 2.2 hitless, shutout innings. And in the Rebels' loss against Mississippi State on Friday, junior Houston Roth pitched three shutout innings despite the losing effort. 

Still, the quality performances have been flanked by surprising struggles. Even when factoring in their stellar performance in Game 2 versus LSU, Miller and Caracci's numbers over this five-game stretch have been brutal. In three innings, Miller has an ERA of 18.00 and a WHIP of 2.00, while Caracci has an ERA of 27.00 and a WHIP of 3.75 over his last 2.2 innings pitched. That included Miller allowed four earned runs without recording an out on Saturday versus Mississippi State, and Caracci allowing two runs on two hits in an inning following Miller.

"I just didn't have a lot of feel," Miller explained postgame. "I didn't have much feel on the breaking ball, obviously. It was up. Everything was up. The mound felt a little slick, obviously. The cleats were heavy. I couldn't get much traction. I just didn't have a lot of feel tonight."

Whatever the problem was on Saturday, Miller said he doesn't expect the problem to bleed into his teammate's performances, or into Ole Miss' psyche for Sunday and beyond.

"Some weekends you're going to have it," Miller said. "Some weekends or some games you're going to be up and down. I don't think our morale or anything like that has wavered at all. We all have each other's backs and I don't think the guys in this dugout think anything less after that. I still think they trust us and we trust them."

Ole Miss coach Mike Bianco agreed.

"I think the pen's been really, really good," Bianco said. "We had a bad ninth down at LSU but I think the pen's been really good. I think they believe in one another."

In particular, Bianco applauded Caracci and Miller for their consistency, saying that Caracci's rough ninth inning in Game 3 against LSU shouldn't be held against him after two impressive seasons as the team's closer and that Miller just had a difficult night Saturday after pitching in all three of the Rebels' games against LSU. 

Still, consistency can't disguise the fact that over the last five games Caracci's ERA has jumped from 2.53 to 5.25 and Miller's has jumped from 1.80 to 2.93. Or that for the first time this season, Ole Miss blew a lead in the last three innings, costing it a crucial SEC series that potentially had postseason seeding riding on the outcome.

But again, Miller isn't all that concerned. He believes he and his teammates will bounce back.

"It's baseball," Miller said. "Stuff's gonna happen. It just sucks that it happened against our arch rival. I think our guys are plenty old enough and mature enough to come back, bounce back tomorrow. It's baseball. Sleep on it tonight. Fresh day tomorrow. Energy Sunday. Go out and get it."

Contact Nick Suss at 601-408-2674 or nsuss@gannett.com. Follow @nicksuss on Twitter.