Missouri Tigers Baseball Needs To Pick Up Win For Star Pitcher, McClain

The Missouri Tigers baseball team plays an all important series with division rival Vanderbilt this weekend, a series which will decide who takes the lead in the division. Mizzou, which fell to Missouri State Tuesday night, remains in the Top 15 and is in position to hang on to their current East division lead if they can manage to take care of one of the better teams in baseball.

It’s been an onslaught of highly ranked, challenging opponents for the Missouri Tigers baseball team, and this one won’t be any easier.

So as we approach the weekend, there’ one thing that we’d really like to see, something that would really bode in the Tigers favor: give one of their best pitchers a win.

Reggie McClain has been one of the best pitchers in the SEC this year. His 2.85 ERA is okay, but he also leads the league in innings pitched, which will affect an ERA regardless. What’s remarkable is that he’s 6th in the SEC in strikeouts, and he’s pitched 22 scoreless innings, including a complete game shutout. This has all culminated into being a three-time SEC pitcher of the week.

With someone who’s consistently been able to strike guys out, keep them off base and throw scoreless innings, the Mizzou pitcher deserves a better fate than the mediocre 5-4 record that he currently has. The Tigers have been uncharacteristically bad at the plate in a few of his starts and additionally, they have shot themselves in the foot with mistakes in the field as well.

Of course, McClain has been tasked with facing the some of the toughest opponents on Mizzou’s schedule. And the Tigers have one of the harder schedules in the league. So it’s no surprise that he hasn’t picked up the spectacular record that his numbers might suggest he has.

But Mizzou should lift McClain up this weekend.

He will make the first start of the three game series in a game and series that have monumental implications for the Missouri Tigers baseball team. This could be the series where we stop only talking about the turnaround year this club is having, and also start talking about SEC championship contention.

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