Baseball Mailbag: What's the ceiling and floor for Ole Miss in 2019?

Ole Miss begins the 2019 season in a week with a home series against Wright State. The Rebels, beginning at No. 10 in the D1Baseball.com poll, bring back a prolific offense and an experienced pitching staff that must adjust to new roles.

Here's at RebelGrove.com you get mailbags throughout the season and here's the first one as we close in on the start of the 56-game regular season.

Absolutely. The 2004 Red Sox self-styled themselves "Idiots" and were much more interesting than the Yankees' appearance policy that's been in effect since 1973. However, considering the Yankees trophy case, who's going to argue? One of the beat writers commented on Olenek's clean look earlier this week, and Ryan replied that it's been short for more than a year, so obviously neither style made much of an impression with at least some people.

Olenek is one of the guys in charge of keeping the team loose and playing with energy on the field. I think some long hair and unkemptness (within reason) are good ways to add to the intrigue. I'm all for the long hair to make its return on No. 2.

Well, here's the nuts and bolts of it. The ceiling is easy. This team has a roster to make the College World Series and compete for a national championship. On paper, the lineup is one of the best in college baseball, and the pitching staff is deep enough to withstand tournament play. The Rebels have one of the best middle infields in the nation with Grae Kessinger and Anthony Servideo and there's at least talent in the spots where I have relative question marks.

The floor is making the NCAA Tournament but not hosting and bowing out on someone's field the first weekend of postseason play. The Rebels under Mike Bianco have never won a road regional. Ole Miss knows all too well it just takes one bad day to end a season, and it's conceivable -- though unlikely -- that the rotation doesn't find its correct niches and defense at catcher and the outfield are issues. In this league a few flaws can be exposed and lead to a breakeven SEC campaign which puts a team on the road for a regional.

The first part of this is simple. There's a weekend date in Baton Rouge for early May that sticks out above all other road trips. LSU is No. 1 in multiple polls, and Alex Box -- whether it's the new one or the old one -- is a house of horrors for the Rebels. Ole Miss hasn't won a series at LSU since 1982. Bianco was 14 years old when Ole Miss last took two of three down there.

The first weekend of April brings No. 3 Florida to Swayze Field. The Gators despite losing two first round picks and an All-America closer, threw 11 different pitchers against South Florida in the fall and 10 of them hit at least 92 MPH. Tyler Dyson seems healthy after a shoulder issue as a sophomore, and the Gators have enough offense to ride pitching and defense in 2019. A road trip to Arkansas and a home series with Florida in back-to-back weeks is Ole Miss' toughest stretch of the season.

Oh, my. If not I'm going to take two weeks off from the message board and then quit.

We need Thomas Dillard to go full time with the facial hair. The mustache on him somehow doesn't look creepy and adds just enough added intrigue to his already diversified game. Instead of doing it for a month, I think it can be a season-long endeavor.

The aforementioned Olenek and Dillard are going to start in center and left, respectively, and Ole Miss will platoon lots of options in the other spot until someone takes it over or one of the other two gets shifted to another spot because of performance or injury.

I'll say Tim Elko gets the first nod out there with Chase Cockrell as the designated hitter, but those two are interchangeable. Bianco will also want to get Carl Gindl, Jacob Adams and others early at-bats to see what's what. If Kessinger misses any early time with that ankle injury, Adams will slide in at second with Servideo at shortstop, opening up more opportunity in the outfield.

All the options can hit, so it's just a matter of letting game action determine the everyday player, and Bianco isn't afraid to let a platoon ride for a long period of time. David Phillips and Jeremy Travis shared right field for all of 2009, as Ole Miss won the SEC title.

The NCAA allows a 35-man baseball roster with a maximum of 27 scholarship players. Each scholarship player must receive at least 25 percent of a scholarship. Each team can distribute a maximum of 11.7 scholarships per year.

Confined to those numbers, there's not much room for creativity. However, most schools in the SEC supplement those totals with in-state academic scholarships based on performance. Most are referred to as "lottery scholarships." The SEC schools in Mississippi and Alabama don't have access to this type of program.

That's the short, basic version. Six years ago I dug into this topic with much more depth. You can find that content here and just scroll down to the subhead titled: Scholarship Situation.

Frankly, there's not much in this latest renovation for fans. It was focused on team amenities. The main thing fans will notice is Ole Miss now occupies the first base dugout instead of the third base dugout. The rooftop seating down the right field line is really neat with great sight lines, but it's a premium area, and I think all seats are sold out for that portion of the stadium.

From an overall appearance standpoint, the best thing is the lowered backstop that allows for better views of the field from behind home plate and gets Ole Miss out of that outdated practice of the tall backstop that was popular in the 1980s.

Not much at all. Jerrion Ealy and John Rhys Plumlee are quality baseball players who will be walk-ons for the Rebels if they suit up at Swayze Field. Since both are football players and on football scholarships, Ole Miss baseball can operate as though they don't exist from a scholarship situation and enjoy the benefits of the situation.

Also, with the 2019 baseball recruiting period pretty much over except for maybe some late junior college help, Ole Miss will know the results of the MLB Draft before it would, in theory, have to figure out roster management on the recruiting side. The 35-man roster next spring would be the only small hurdle, and a lot like with football recruiting the numbers always work out.

There's not a negative to Ealy and Plumlee signing with Ole Miss. Both will have options to bypass college baseball for the professional game, but there's no problematic issue as it pertains to them and Bianco's program.

Fitzsimmons, who was named the team captain, is an intriguing case as it comes to playing time. The lack of a true position limits his options, but he couldn't have done much more lasts season with minimal at-bats. Fitzsimmons hit .440 with a 1.493 OPS in 25 at-bats., and it's more interesting as you dive into the situational stats.

He struck out only five times -- not bad for a free swinger -- and walked three times to go with two hit by pitches. I expected to see a wild difference against lefty or righty pitching, but frankly he hit everybody.

Against left-handed pitching, Fitzsimmons had a .500 average in 14 plate appearances with a goofy 1.738 OPS, and against the other side he still hit close to .400 in 16 plate appearances. With the runs created stat, Fitzsimmons created more runs than Tim Rowe and twice as many as Servideo despite having 41 and 40 fewer plate appearances, respectively.

The sample sizes are small, but he's at minimum a likely weapon off the bench. And those eye-popping numbers make me wonder what he would do with consistent opportunities for at least a couple weeks.