The LSU baseball team and the party people celebrating Mardi Gras throughout Baton Rouge didn’t have too different of days.
Early on it was a lot of set up for a great payoff. Though the game was close and low scoring through the first half of play you could feel something was coming. Once the seal broke, it became a party the rest of the way. LSU scored all nine of their runs through the last four innings to secure a 9-2 victory over Southern on Saturday afternoon.
“We could feel that it was only a matter of time,” Coach Jay Johnson said about the slow offensive start. Johnson feels confident that the offense will be able to find that groove most nights, “There’s just no breaks in that lineup for a pitcher when you have nine guys giving quality at-bats.”
First Baseman Tre’ Morgan added after the game, “We know our lineup is so explosive, it could come at any time. The biggest thing, as Coach Johnson says, is having three quality at bats in a row. That’s what we were searching for all day and we finally found it.”
Outside of just the bats at the end, the pitching really came through in this one. Starter Ma’Khail Hilliard had a solid showing outside of really just two bad at-bats that happened to be back to back. Then, the bullpen came through and delivered five innings of scoreless baseball. Hard to lose when you are given that kind of performance.
Coach Johnson told us after the game that he really thinks the bullpen will be a strength of the team this season. “That’s another sign of a good team. I think you saw a few things today. I think you saw a template of how we’re going to roll in terms of the types of games we want. Good pitching. Good defense. Stay with it on offense until you break through,” said Coach. He later added, “when you have a good offense the bullpen is even more important.”
One bad thing that came out of today though was that Javen Coleman had to leave the game early due to his arm feeling weird after a wild throw. He pitched just one and a third innings today and we have no further update yet on the severity.
All-American transfer Jacob Berry’s lull has continued today as he went 0-4 at the plate. With a guy like that, though, it is only a matter of time. Patience worked out today for the LSU bats, so there’s no reason we can’t keep that going for Berry. He has shown his flashes, the bat just hasn’t been consistent yet.
LSU will play a doubleheader tomorrow at Alex Box Stadium. The game against Towson will begin at 11 a.m. and Southern will begin at 5 p.m. Johnson has told us that Ty Floyd will start one of the two games, and that’s all that is concrete for now.