Change in position, lineup spot for Kamiak’s Heck at MSU

Published 3:09 pm Wednesday, May 6, 2015

Midway through his senior season at Mississippi State, former Kamiak star Seth Heck was asked to make a position change and to drop in the batting order as the Bulldogs struggled to keep their SEC Tournament and NCAA Regional hopes alive.

Heck, who played at Tacoma Community College before transferring to Mississippi State, played shortstop and hit near the top of the order in his first year in Starkville in 2014.

That continued through the first 27 games of his senior campaign, when he became entrenched as the Bulldogs’ leadoff hitter and aimed to repeat as the SEC’s Gold Glove shortstop.

But struggles at the hot corner prompted a position change for Heck.

Mississippi State third basemen combined to make 30 errors in the team’s first 27 games and hit .205 (24-for-117) at the plate.

With freshman shortstop of the future Ryan Gridley waiting in the wings, Bulldogs coach John Cohen made the move heading into the Bulldogs’ home series with Auburn on March 27-29.

“We like to put as many great athletes as we can in that infield,” Cohen said in an email. “The guys we have in there now have proven that they are very capable of handling the job, and capable of making spectacular plays. We are pleased with where our defense is at right now.”

Gridley is said to have more range and better quickness at shortstop than Heck, but when I interviewed Cohen about Heck for a Herald story that ran on March 13, Cohen praised Heck’s consistency in the field.

“When the ball touches his glove, there’s a very good chance that there’s going to be an out attached to it,” Cohen said. “You can have all the arm strength and athleticism in the world, but there are many defenders that struggle with finishing plays. Seth finishes plays and gets outs, and it makes our pitching staff more comfortable if balls are hit to the left side of the infield.”

Heck said the switch was a major adjustment for him to make.

“It’s definitely different. It’s only 10 feet difference from playing short, but it’s a whole new world,” he said in an email. “The ball just gets on you so fast and you really can’t learn that until you experience it. It’s called the hot corner for a reason. I can count on my hand the number of times I’ve even stood at third base. And I know I haven’t done it since I was 10 years old. But if that’s what the team needs, that’s what I’m going to do.”

Heck has made only seven errors on the season — four before the switch to third and three after the move.

He is one of only two MSU players to appear in all 48 of the Bulldogs’ games this season, but did not start in the first and third games of the team’s most recent series, at home against top-ranked LSU.

Heck appeared as a pinch-hitter in the first game and as a defensive replacement in the other, and ESPN reported during the games that he had been battling a myriad of nagging injuries.

Heck is hitting .294, fifth-best on the team, and is tied for fourth with 24 runs scored, but saw his name drop to eighth on the lineup card in a change that coincided with his move to third base.

The Bulldogs currently sit at 24-24 overall and 8-16 in SEC play. The Bulldogs are last in the SEC West, but the top 12 teams from both divisions advance to the SEC Tournament in Hoover, Ala. beginning on May 19.

As it stands today, both of the teams excluded would be from the SEC East. Georgia is 7-16 and Tennessee is 7-17 with two league series remaining.

SEC heads to intrastate rival Ole Miss this weekend before traveling to Tennessee to finish the regular season.

How those two series go will determine whether or not Mississippi State has any hope of qualifying for the NCAA Tournament. Today’s projected field of 64 done by D1baseball.com has the Bulldogs out.

A team cannot qualify for the NCAA Tournament with a sub-.500 record.