Krings tosses a masterpiece and The CoMo Kid keeps rollin’
Sitting high atop our perch in Mizzou Softball Stadium press box on Saturday night to report on Missouri (36-13, 9-10 SEC) vs. Mississippi State (30-14, 9-10 SEC), something different emerged in the dugout. We are used to seeing a very light on their feet sort of dugout this season. It’s fun over there. “The vibes”, as NBA star Jalen Brunson once said, “are immaculate.”
There’s dancing, there’s chanting — “Heyyyy Abby, Abby Hayyyyyyy” — there’s a constant flurry of movement and no sitting down, there’s makeshift headsets made from Gatorade cups, there’s appealing to HCLA for candy like a mob of meerkats… There’s… [checks photo logs] a chair being raised into the sky, which might have been tossed around at various points?
Sounds about right.
So, what gives? We asked both Laurin Krings and Abby Hay about it postgame, and then got further clarification from Larissa Anderson later on.
Laurin Krings was quick to tell us, “That’s [gestures to teammate Abby Hay] her class. I just looked over to see the sign and I just see a chair there. Like, what the heck?! These freshmen come up with something new every game.” It’s important to note here, Krings was not annoyed by the antics. Moreso… unaffected by the actions of her younger teammates.
Abby elaborated. “If you strike out,” she said, “You go take a seat on the bench, So they’re just (reminding) her about the chair after each strikeout… she needs to go sit down.”
Literal L O L.
When asked for further clarification, Anderson said, “Anytime there were two strikes and they wanted Krings to strike them out, they were saying ‘throw her a chair’ so that’s why they were holding up the chair.”
Well, when you say it that way, that makes perfect sense.
Are we worried that the chair thing will tire them out? “I mean, if there is (an injury concern) then we’ve got to talk to the strength coach because they don’t have the upper body strength to hold the chair up.”
The point of referencing all of this tomfoolery (including the “headset” pictured below) is this— a team that works hard and is also light on their feet and having a good time is one that is hard to beat, as referenced by Saturday’s 4-0 dismantling of the potent offense that encompasses the no. 18 team in the country. They’re not thinking of the rankings, whether or not they’ll be hosting Regionals or Supers, or even who their opponent is. They’re so focused on themselves and their energy.
IT’S THE VIBES, MAN.
When talking with Coach about the season winding down and what this team has meant to her, I was floored by her brutal honesty.
“This is probably one of my most favorite teams I’ve ever coached. It really is. And I’m going back 25 years. I can be myself. Last year, I was exhausted because I had to motivate. Every day I had to wake up and the practice preparation and the emotional energy I had to give to them to get them to do what they needed to do was exhausting.”
She continued. “I don’t have to do that with this team. Like literally, they’re out there on the field before practice even starts. And that’s when you know you have an unbelievable culture in your locker room when they want to be here.”
Special. That’s what you should take away from this, without me even telling you how the game went thus far. This team is special, and a true joy to watch in all aspects.
I mean… just look at this interaction.
Some teams say they’re a family. Some teams live it. #TeamFirst #OwnIt https://t.co/iRqMe20gtI
— Larissa Anderson (@CoachLarissaA) April 28, 2024
An Ace Re-emerges
I will say, friends, I predicted this. Roll the tape! After a handful of really nice performances against Georgia last weekend, I thought to myself, “SHE BACK.” And back she is. This was vintage Laurin Krings stuff on Saturday. Remarkably efficient, throwing only 81 (!) pitches and facing 24 batters, just four over the minimum. She allowed just three hits and a walk while striking out five — including striking out the side in the fourth inning — and did not allow an extra-base hit nor more than a single runner on base at a time. Hot damn. It was downright Specs-tacular.
For a player who, the last time we talked to Anderson (we didn’t talk to her this week), harped on the stark difference between her bullpen sessions and in-game performances, Krings’ focus has been spot on.
“It’s like when you watch her, she knows the end is near, and she’s like, the time is now,” Coach said. “It just shows that last week and how well she threw wasn’t a fluke. And that she can repeat that behavior and that outing and that command, I thought was so impressive with her is how efficient she was. Extremely efficient. I mean, I think she threw 14 In the first two innings and commanded both sides of the plate. kept them off balance or changeup was spot on. We didn’t have to live on one side and she just she controlled the bats and kept them off balance. It was extremely impressive.”
— Karen S (@karensteger) April 28, 2024
Heyyyyyyyyyy, Abby Hay!
The CoMo Kid, just a freshman, is now 18 of her last 39 at the plate, including two-for-four in Saturday’s matchup. “How very Mizzou of her,” my colleague Quentin Corpuel noted, referencing the year the University founded. Per MUTigers.com, Hay’s hit streak now extends to five games, and with Saturday’s performance tallied her fourth multi-hit and third multi-RBI performance.
On the success of her budding star, who now leads the team with a .413/.652/.526 line in 46 AB, Anderson said, “One— she hasn’t tried to do too much. Like she’s not up there looking to try to hit homeruns or do something that is uncharacteristic. She’s going to put a good swing on a pitch and wherever it goes, it’s where it’s supposed to go. That’s the most impressive thing.”
She continued. “When you watch her, when a pitch is thrown to her, she literally is processing what the pitch will look like, what it was doing, where it was going, to gain information to have a plan on what she’s looking for. It’s something that seniors are doing, not freshmen.”
In the bottom of the second, with two runners on, Hay expertly placed a single to left, and thanks to a real comedy of errors on the State side, allowed both Alex Honnold and Maddie Gallagher to score for an early 2-0 lead, and allowed her to take third.
“Our joke is that I’m kinda like Lightning McQueen,” Hay said post-game, referencing her sometimes propensity for speed and the well-known Cars character. “I told Coach to put me in as a red light runner so I’m not going on much, so it’s kind of a joke to like, my speed, but I’ll unhook the trailer every now and then.”
Hay would bring in another run in the bottom of the fifth, as an RBI fielder’s choice scored Laird and widened the MU lead to three.
“When she was on first base,” Anderson recalled in the post-game, “and Stefania hit the ground ball to the second baseman, Abby went first to third on that ball. And when she got to third base, she said, ‘I changed the rhythm of my lead so I could screen the fielder.’ So she couldn’t see the entire ground ball, right? Like, that’s the stuff that I’ve tried to teach, but it’s really hard for them to process in game speed. For her to get to third base and say she tried to screen her so she couldn’t’ see the ground ball is extremely impressive.”
EXCUSE ME, WHAT?
I’ve got to tell you, the way we all stood there, me and my J School beat writer posse, with our mouths agape when Anderson relayed this information was unreal. I think I gasped.
Leadoff Laird Returns to Form
Just a game removed from a pretty forgettable series for the shortstop in Athens — she was 0-for-12 — the senior New Yorker had a 2-for-4 day at the plate with an RBI and a key run scored on a fielder’s choice.
“We talked about this in the locker room,” Coach said. “It wasn’t pretty (the game as a whole). We didn’t hit balls off the fence and hit the ball out of the ballpark. We were grinding today. And that’s what Jenna does. Jenna just grinds. She puts the ball in play and makes things happen and then went first to third on Alex’s bunt, like those type of things. And those are the type of players that are just gamers and find a way to be able to win.”
The aforementioned play Anderson referenced took place in the bottom of the fifth was a single, but extremely heads-up baserunning on an elitely** placed bunt by Alex Honnold allowed her to book it from first to third. A swiped base by Honnold put runners on second and third for Abby, who reached on a fielder’s choice, and brought Jenna home to make it 3-0. The whole sequence was masterful.
In the sixth, Laird hit the ball into what appeared to be the Bermuda Triangle of center field, as three Mississippi State fielders descended upon the ball, and not one corralled it, allowing the speedster to take second with a double, which also scored Chantice Phillips and made it a four-run game.
(side note: apparently, elitely is not a word, but we’re going with it, because both the play and the bunt were, in fact, elite)
Making Adjustments
Mississippi State pitcher Aspen Wesley had a very effective change up, which at times seemed to stun the Tiger hitters. They were, after all, dealt a called third strike in four of their seven strikeouts. That sounds bad, I know, but the strike zone seemed a bit wonky at times, and we shouldn’t look just to that when examining Missouri’s overall performance.
“I think we’re doing a much better job,” Anderson said post-game. “There are very few swings and misses, very few times we were fooled. I’ll go back and look at the video on some of those called third strikes. I just question where the ball was in the zone and what we were seeing.”
In this week’s practices, both Hay and Anderson talked about the adjustments that were able to make as a team to prepare for this.
“We’re setting up two machines side by side (in practice) and we’re going hard pitch, soft, hard, soft back and forth. And then sometimes it’s random,” Anderson =explained. “We’re being able to differentiate the two different speeds and the adjustment we have to make.”
Abby also referenced the hitting machine and how it’s helped. “In practice we’ve been working on sitting back on the changeup and we’ve been doing really good working on that [with the help of the pitching machine],” Hay said. “And I think tonight we were just trusting in letting it [the pitch] get deep and not getting out in front of it.”
UP NEXT: With inclement weather on deck, Sunday’s Game 2 tilt has been pushed to a 4pm CT start (it was at 5pm). I would expect to see CC Harrison in the circle, with Marissa McCann in the mix for a kinda 1-2 punch.
I hope you’ll join us. This team is SO DAMN FUN to cover.