Missouri Tigers Baseball Falls To Missouri State

The Missouri Tigers baseball team fell Tuesday night in close battle with in-state rival Missouri State. In the match up between the No. 14 and No. 15 ranked teams, the better ranked team fell on its home field 9-8 in a thrilling battle of the bats.

Our earlier prediction that this would be a low-scoring proved false, as the sharp pitchers for both teams kept pitching themselves into a jam and the hitter kept driving in runs.

Big RBIs in the middle of the game from Ryan Howard, Brett Peel and Jake Ivory put Mizzou up 7-3. But the Tigers squandered it away with bad defense and sub-par bullpen pitching as the Bears came roaring back. Five sixth inning runs from MSU punished the Tigers and the visitors took an 8-7 lead.

Trey Harris tallied his third home run of the season to tie the game at 8 in the bottom of the 8th. But two late errors from Missouri proved costly in the 9th inning and Missouri State scored the go ahead run. Mizzou was unable to get a runner on in the bottom of the final inning, and the Bears walked away the victors.

The Tigers’ red hot closer, Breckin Williams, was iced by those errors that led to the go ahead run, and he deserved a better fate. Missouri will need to tighten things up a lot out in the field as things move forward in SEC play.

“We just have to play better defense,” Tigers head coach Tim Jamieson said via a press release. “Simple as that, if we play better defense, we win the game.”

Missouri drops to 26-15 (12-6 SEC) on the year, but will get an enormous opportunity to maintain their high ranking and stay on top of their SEC East lead with a series against division rival Vanderbilt starting on Friday.

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