A game where the No. 4 LSU baseball team scored 15 runs is one they would rather forget about.
LSU faced Texas Southern University in the first game of the Baton Rouge Regional and while it wasn’t a pretty win, in fact, senior shortstop Kramer Robertson referred to the game as an ‘F,” the team is only focused on the next challenge: moving forward in the NCAA tournament.
“We’ve been playing so good, so crisp, so clean, so smart, and today we didn’t do a lot of those things,” coach Paul Mainieri said. “We just didn’t play very well today.”
The first three errors came within the first two innings of the game and looked very unlike the typical LSU baseball team fans are use to seeing. All five errors were made within the first five innings.
“You know, we’ve been good on defense,” junior catcher Michael Papierski said. “Like Poche said, all year, and we’re going to have those couple games. We’re just going to flush it and move on to the next one. Like I said earlier, we’re just glad it’s over.”
The five errors were a season high and in turn resulted in six unearned runs from Texas Southern.
Heading into the bottom of the fifth inning, LSU trailed 7-5 and it was the bottom third of the lineup that would put the Tigers back in the game and help lift the team to the 15-7 victory.
One thing Mainieri couldn’t ignore was that when the top of the lineup couldn’t produce, the Tigers couldn’t be counted out just yet.
“When we’re getting production out of the bottom of the order, it just makes it that much more difficult for the other team’s pitcher,” Mainieri said. “And I think that makes you a pretty good offensive team.”
Freshman third baseman Josh Smith, Papierski and freshman centerfielder Zach Watson went 6-for-10 at the plate.
Papierski and Watson even hit back-to-back home runs in the seventh inning.
“When your bottom of the order is producing like we have been,” Mainieri said, “I think that gives you a really good offensive team because you know sooner or later Robertson and Freeman and Deichmann and Duplantis are going to get their hits, and they’re going to produce some runs.”
Despite the errors and at times just plain ugliness, the Tigers stay confident in the way they have played toward the end of the season and hope to continue that into the rest of the NCAA tournament.
“Today was an aberration,” Mainieri said. “We have a good defensive team, but today it just — it was just a bunch of weird things happening.”
LSU freshman infielder and outfielder Zach Watson (9) watches the ball as it is thrown to the pitcher during the Tigers' 7-4 win against Texas A&M on Friday, March 31, 2017 at Alex Box Stadium.
