LSU will lose more baseball games. Paul Mainieri is sure of it.
So that’s why in the moments following a rain-shortened 4-1 loss against UL-Lafayette that ended the Tigers’ 34-game midweek game winning streak on Tuesday, Mainieri expressed his disappointment in the result but hardly cast the contest as indicative of arising problems.
“We have nothing to be ashamed of because ULL has a fine club, and we didn’t get to play the full nine innings,” Mainieri said. “We’re not going to hit the panic button over one loss.”
But while panic remains a distant word, Mainieri was sure that tendencies needed to be corrected.
He lamented the seven fly ball outs his team produced through five innings and wished the Tigers (7-1) had more productive at-bats against UL-Lafayette righty Greg Milhorn.
And for perhaps the first time on a big stage, Mainieri saw the flip-side of having a group of supremely talented freshmen.
Trailing 2-0, LSU freshman second baseman Kramer Robertson was plunked in the shoulder, and he advanced to second on a wild pitch to bring Mark Laird to the plate with two out in the third inning.
Laird hit a sharp grounder to shortstop that ULL’s Blake Trahan snagged on a dive. He had no chance to nab the speedy Laird at first, but Robertson missed the sign from LSU third base coach Will Davis and sped home.
Trahan tossed to catcher Michael Strentz to gun Robertson at the plate and end the inning.
“I remember the first day he got on campus and I talked to the team about baserunning,” Mainieri said. “Rule number one is run with your eyes up.”
“He ran us right out of the inning with [Alex] Bregman coming up to bat. Those are experiences he’ll learn from, and I like to call them freshmen mistakes.”
The offense was stagnant for most of the evening as Milhorn worked around singles in the second and third innings and a leadoff walk in the fourth to escape unscathed until the fifth.
LSU sophomore center fielder and Lafayette native Andrew Stevenson provided perhaps the only spark of the evening to lead off the fifth, drilling a triple down the first base line into the corner.
Junior catcher Tyler Moore brought Stevenson home on a sacrifice fly one at-bat later to get the Tigers on the scoreboard.
But by then, the Cajuns had built their lead through playing scrappy offense and keeping momentum from shifting to the Tiger dugout.
“This is such a huge momentum team here,” UL-Lafayette coach Tony Robichaux said. “We played well for the length of the time we had to play.”
Mainieri called LSU starter Cody Glenn’s outing “average.” The junior southpaw left after just four innings facing the aggressive Ragin Cajun offense where he surrendered five hits and three runs.
“That’s just the kind of pitcher he is,” Mainieri said. “He’s not overpowering, he’s got to be perfect, nibble a lot and sometimes he’s going to leave them out of the zone.”
After stranding a runner in scoring position in both of the first two innings, UL-Lafayette was able to push two runs across in the third as Glenn led off the inning with a five-pitch walk to nine-hole hitter Greg Davis.
The southpaw got leadoff man Caleb Adams looking, but then allowed a Seth Harrison full-count triple to the deepest part of the ballpark to chase Davis home.
Cajun shortstop Trahan sent a sacrifice fly to right field to score Harrison and push the Cajun lead to 2-0.
After Strentz led off the fourth with a single, Jace Conrad followed two batters later with a hot shot that Tiger senior third baseman Christian Ibarra couldn’t handle on a hop, sending Harrison home and giving the Cajuns a 3-0 lead.
“It’s a shame that two good teams couldn’t play nine innings,” Robichaux said. “In this business, you have to play nine and not five. It is what it is, but we’re only going to focus on we played well through five innings.”