GSU Baseball Welcomes Alabama State on Tuesday

The Georgia State Panthers baseball team will face off against the Alabama State Hornets today at 5 PM, weather permitting. Let's hope the weather does cooperate today as last year's 2 games vs Alabama State resulted in a 27-3 and 23-1 offensive attack on the Hornets. What a nice way to get everyone's confidence up on seeing the ball well at the plate. The Panthers enter today's game with a 13-4 record sitting atop the CAA. The Hornets are 5-5 (I incorrectly stated 4-5-1 previously) and will be rusty as they haven't played since Sunday, March 6th. I hope this game is the needed catalyst to get much of the team bats on a hot streak.

Who: The Alabama State Hornets compete in NCAA D1 Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC). This is the 2nd SWAC team GSU will have faced this season. The Panthers swept Texas Southern in a 3-game home series to open the 2011 season. The Hornets finished the 2010 season with a 13-28 record. This is a veteran team coming in as they only lost 1 letterwinner and no starters from 2010. Coach Frady has not lost to a SWAC opponent as Head Coach of GSU. GSU does share a 2011 common opponent with ASU in Mercer University. ASU lost 0-8, 1-9 and 2-18 at Mercer in the end of February. The Panthers beat Mercer 14-5 right before the ASU-Mercer series.

ASU at the Plate: ASU is batting .240 as a team and is scoring 6.2 runs per game however they have scored under 4 runs in 5 games and over 7 in only 3. Starting left fielder (Jr.) Jordan Mims leads the starters on offense with a .333 batting average and 5 RBI's. Senior Catcher Jourdan Mott is the batting .313 and leads the team with 10 RBI's and 2 home runs. The Hornets have only 11 doubles, no triples and 3 home runs as a team. Mims and Mott are the only 2 regular starters batting over .300. They steal bases with success when they do decide to run as they've only been caught stealing in 1 of 23 attempts.

ASU on the Mound: The Hornets have a staff ERA of 6.15 through 10 games. They have given up 7 runs per game in 2010. They have a couple starters who've performed well, one average and a couple who have been rocked on the mound. The starter for today's game is still un-announced by ASU. Outside of senior righty Devin Dominquez, the Hornet relief staff has not been good this season.

GSU at the Plate: Rob Lind and Ryan Fleming will look to continue their hot streak at the plate after bringing their averages up to .245 and .283 respectively. Fleming had 2 game-winning hits against Towson and had a 3-run home run in Sunday's finale. Rob racked up a .867 on-base percentage in the series. Outfielder Brett Maxwell still leads the team with a .442 batting average while Mark Micowski and Ryan Fleming are leading the team with 12 RBI's each.

GSU on the Mound: Right hand redshirt sophomore Brandon Bast will get his first start for GSU. Brandon is a Panther newcomer this season as he transferred from Georgia Perimeter College where he put in relief work in the 2010 season. He went 1-2 with 17 strikeouts in 16 innings of relief. Brandon has worked 3 innings this season and has allowed 2 runs on 5 hits. He has given 3 walks and has 2 strikeouts in his appearances. The Panthers offense should provide a large lead for this to be a staff game on the mound. I would guess Brandon pitches 4 or 5 innings before giving way to some relievers for work to stay fresh.

This should be an easy game for the Panthers and could be the first game of the season to top 20 runs. The current high for runs scored is 14 when the Panthers beat Mercer 14-5 in Macon. Good luck to Brandon in his first start tonight!