The LSU baseball team wasted no time in putting its batting problems from the weekend behind them against Grambling State, toppling the visiting Tigers, 17-10, Tuesday night.
In the second inning alone, LSU, who improved to 6-2 with the win, put up six runs—one more run than it scored all weekend against Appalachian State.
“The pitching was not as challenging as we faced last weekend, but still, it was good to see some guys get some hits and hit the ball hard,” said LSU coach Paul Mainieri. “We hit a lot of line drives and some in the gaps, which was nice to see.”
LSU accounted for three triples in the eighth inning. Prior to the game, the Tigers led the Southeastern Conference with four triples on the season.
Junior right fielder Raph Rhymes had a memorable night, racking up a career-best six RBIs to go with a career-best four hits.
“I’ve got to give it to the guys in front of me,” Rhymes said. “They got on base and got into scoring position and without them, I wouldn’t have been able to drive them in.”
Despite LSU finding a fix for its hitting woes, the Tigers couldn’t find much consistency on the other side of the plate.
LSU freshman pitcher Cody Glenn got off to a hot start in his first career start, but couldn’t maintain his initial domination.
Glenn struck out the first four batters of the game—the first three of which struck out looking.
But Glenn quickly ran into trouble, giving up four earned runs, eight hits and six strikeouts over 3 1/3 innings.
LSU and Grambling combined for 34 hits off of 11 different pitchers between the teams.
“These mid-week games can get crazy sometimes,” Mainieri said. “We struck out a lot of their batters, but they seemed to be tough outs against our pitchers as well. We’re kind of happy we can finally take a breath after nine innings.”
The Tigers head to McNeese State for LSU’s first road game tonight, where freshman pitcher Aaron Nola will get his first career start.