By Parrish Alford
In a rare approach for baseball, or life in general for that matter, the quest for playing time was won by the man who gave it no thought.
He disregarded it completely.
Focus on such individual competition “is a little bit of a dangerous game,” Bryce Chance said.
Yet the Madison-Ridgeland Academy alumnus and fifth-year Mississippi State senior outfielder has emerged and has held his spot in an offense that was the talk of the SEC in the off-season.
He reads and listens. He knew the heralded and productive transfers – 18 in all – that would follow a coach like Brian O’Connor to MSU.
In a program looking for a restart after the late-season firing of Chris Lemonis, who led the program it its first national championship in 2021, there would be no playing time guarantees.
Jobs were on the line.
“The main thing was I needed to go out there and do what’s best for the team instead of trying to impress anyone,” he said.
Chance was 5-for-10 with a pair of walks, a bright spot in a disappointing start to SEC play for the Bulldogs who were ranked third by D1Baseball.com when they lost twice at No. 5 Arkansas last weekend.
The Razorbacks pushed across a run in the ninth for a walk-off win in Game 1. The two teams split a doubleheader on Saturday with Arkansas winning 7-2 then State avoiding the sweep with a 7-3 victory.
MSU, now ranked No. 6, plays host to Vanderbilt, which opened SEC play with two wins in a three-game series over then-No. 13 LSU last weekend, in a three-game series, starting Friday in Starkville.
Chance, who took an offer from Lemonis, his only major college offer, hit .332 with 14 doubles, four home runs and 43 RBIs last season.
None of that mattered when practice started in January, but he refused to get caught up in the daily grind against the rest of the outfielders.
His focus was “just trying to do whatever it takes to show I’m a good baseball player and help this team win.”
That focus has Chance hitting a team-leading .431 – the only full-time starter hitting at least .400 – with six doubles and 11 RBIs. He also leads the team with a .541 on-base percentage and with seven stolen bases and is second with 23 runs scored, only three behind preseason All-American third baseman Ace Reese.
In another oddity of baseball O’Connor chooses to put his hottest hitter last in the nine hole.
O’Connor likes Chance’s ability to flip the lineup, avoiding the rally-killing outs that can often plague the bottom of the order.
“It’s incredibly valuable because he’s able to turn the lineup over and get it to the top,” O’Connor said. “He’s such a competitor and knows what it takes to lead at this level.”
Amid the change in Starkville, O’Connor and his staff have shown deft handling of a productive player, neither tinkering with Chance’s mechanics nor letting him completely freelance outside of their team plan.
“They’ve hammered home that their approach in the batter’s box is the main thing,” Chance said. “They’ve done a really good job of not letting guys have cookie-cutter swings. What works for someone might now work for someone else. They do a good job of letting your swing be yours.”
The transition hasn’t been only about O’Connor getting to know his players. Chance was intentional about getting to know the new staff.
He didn’t go off to play summer ball, and that gave him time to spend around Dudy Noble Field in the off-season.
While new coaches were trying to find the restrooms on campus and the restaurants away, Chance was nearby to lend a hand.
“I was able to be around them, to learn their personalities and what they are about,” Chance said. “That was something that was beneficial to me when practice started.”
That extra time after the staff’s arrival helped put Chance at ease.
“You knew it was going to be different, and that’s something that can be scary,” he said.
The transition has gone about as well as it could for Chance. Facing challenges to his playing time he’s supplemented his practice work with more reps before and after.
His approach to all the new in his baseball life – the patience he’s shown – is much like his approach at the plate. It’s detail. It’s crossing t’s, dotting I’s.
It’s leaving nothing to chance.
“I would say my bat-to-ball and my patience at the plate are the two things that are going to allow me to help this team the most,” Chance said. “It’s a very difficult thing, hitting, but it’s something that if you come to the facility every day, you put your head down and work through it, then it seems that everything just kind of happens for you during games.”
Chance was one of the most hardest working players and had one of the highest baseball IQs of any player that longtime Mississippi high school coach Allen Pavatte has ever coached. Pavatte was one of the most successful high school baseball coaches in Mississippi history with 731 victories, five state championships and nine state runner-up finishes in his 31-year head coaching career. Pavatte took the head of school position at Manchester Academy in Yazoo City two years ago after 13 successful seasons at MRA.
Chance was one of his favorites.
“We had some great players then when Bryce was playing – John Witt Snopek, Niko Mazza, Brennan Jones, Stone Blanton,” Pavatte said. “Bryce was a good player, too. He had one of the highest baseball IQs I have ever coached when he came into the program. He had a great understanding of the game and how to play the game. And he had a relentless work ethic. He was bound and determined to overcome any obstacles that he faced.”
Chance didn’t start immediately as a sophomore. In fact, he was on the junior varsity.
“At the start of his sophomore year, I put Bryce on the junior varsity team, but the other coaches kept telling me we needed him in the lineup but I wanted to him to see if he was consistent enough,” Pavatte said. “He proved that he was good enough because we would put him in as a pinch hitter and he kept coming through with big hits. I remember we put him in the lineup against St. Martin at Northwest Rankin and he had some big at bats in that game and he was in the starting lineup from then on. We weren’t sure what position to put Bryce. He started out as a catcher, but we thought his best fit was the outfield.”
Pavatte told the coaches at Mississippi State they needed to sign Chance, but they weren’t too interested at first.
“I had talked to the coaches at Mississippi State earlier in his career, but I didn’t get much feedback from them,” Pavatte said. “I told them they need to offer him because he’s one of the top five hitters I’ve ever coached. He’s not going to wow you, but he’s so consistent. He gets on base and makes other people play at a higher level. And he loved Mississippi State and it was his dream to play there. We were videoing our hitters in January going into his senior year and he hit this mammoth home run and we put it on social media and it went wild. Mississippi State coaches saw it and offered a scholarship.”
Chance is the ultimate teammate.
“Another thing that stood out about Bryce is his empathy for his teammates,” Pavatte said. “Braden Bailey wasn’t one of our most talented players, but Bryce took time to help him and they became good buddies and Bryce helped Braden with his confidence. That’s the kind of person Bryce is, he invests in people and is always an encouraging person. He works hard and was awarded the Iron Bulldog award during the fall. That’s Bryce. He made himself into the player he is today. I’m so proud of him. He’s highly motivated. The more you tell him he can’t do something, the more he tries to prove you wrong. You can count on him giving his best every single day. There aren’t may people in this world who live out their dream, but Bryce is one of those.”
Robert Wilson contributed to this story.
Parrish Alford, a two-time Mississippi sports writer of the year, was raised in Denham Springs, Louisiana and graduated from Northeast Louisiana University before the school changed its name to Louisiana-Monroe.
He’s covered college sports in Mississippi since 1989, spending time as a beat writer for multiple seasons at each of the state’s Division I schools.
He’s most known for his work as a beat writer and columnist for the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal in Tupelo, where he spent 30 years.
He is the author of “Habitual Deadline – sports stories of three-plus decades from the guy who came and stayed.”
A Christian, husband, father and grandfather, he is currently the editor of American Family News (AFN.net), a division of American Family Association.
