A rally, a shutout and a blowout highlighted the No. 5 LSU baseball team’s three-game set with Cincinnati to open the 2016 season at Alex Box Stadium.
Despite the inconsistent results for a new-look team, the overall outcome was familiar to 10-year Tiger coach Paul Mainieri — his sixth season-opening sweep of a single opponent, capitalized by Sunday’s 12-4 trouncing of the Bearcats (0-3).
“We got a long way to go,” Mainieri said. “We need to make a lot of improvement in a lot areas. But you can’t be terribly unhappy winning three games, especially with the bats coming to life today.”
With Sunday’s victory, Mainieri has swept all but one season-opening series since arriving in Baton Rouge, excluding two opening weekends where the Tigers (3-0) played more than one team.
When starting the season, Mainieri’s philosophy has always been the same and isn’t uncommon: give as many players as possible a chance to play when the opportunity presents itself. LSU’s opening games are usually winnable, making playing time for multiple young or new players a high probability at some point during the first series.
It was no different this weekend, as every available position player and all but two available pitchers appeared against the Bearcats.
“I always like to get guys into the games the first weekend because they’ve been playing every day in intrasquad games, just like the starting players,” Mainieri said. “[The backup players’] timing is good. They’re confident because they’ve been playing, and you like to let them get their first taste of Division I college baseball that first weekend. Several of them took advantage of their first opportunity.”
The first or — in some cases — second appearances by backup players’ on Sunday produced the most dominant offensive showing of the series. Entering Game 3 with a .192 batting average, Sunday’s win featured 10 hits and four home runs, including a grand slam by JUCO transfer and designated hitter Bryce Adams.
Fellow JUCO transfer Jordan Romero, star of Friday night’s 6-5, 12-inning victory, made his first collegiate start behind the plate count, as starting sophomore catcher Michael Papierski had the day off. Following his game-tying and game-winning singles in Game 1, Romero blasted the first pitch he saw over the left-center field wall in the bottom of the fifth inning, the second of LSU’s back-to-back home runs in the frame.
After a humbling set of practices in the fall, Romero, who was 3-for-4 at the plate with four RBIs on the weekend, came back in the spring with a new perspective, he said.
“The way my fall went wasn’t how I expected,” Romero said. “My whole life, I’ve been a good hitter. I’ve never had any problems with that. This fall, I hit a little rough patch. In any aspect in life, I think going through things like that is good because mentally you become stronger and you learn from what you were doing wrong. If you have that determination to keep churning forward, good things will happen.”
Despite the offensive surge arriving late, productive starting pitching proved to be the one constant among LSU’s three victories against the Bearcats. The three starting Tiger hurlers combined to strikeout 21 batters, underlined by right-handed sophomore Alex Lange’s one-hit, nine-strikeout performance on Saturday.
Although junior lefty Jared Poche’ didn’t record the win, leaving in the top of the seventh of Game 1 with a 3-1 deficit, he recorded five strikeouts despite little run support in his season debut.
In his first start in an LSU uniform, left-handed senior John Valek III settled in nicely after a two-run first inning, retiring 13 of the next 15 Cincinnati hitters he faced. Not regarded as a punch-out pitcher, the senior Akron transfer struck out seven and didn’t allow a walk.
Valek did surrender two solo homers in the top of the sixth. However, the pair of dingers didn’t matter, as the Tiger offense plowed forward, padding their lead to 12-4 by the end of the bottom of the sixth.
“I was trying to calm myself down [before the game], but you obviously don’t know how you’re going to feel until you’re actually out there on the mound,” Valek said. “That first inning, I was going a little too fast. But once I got in here and settled down in the dugout and took a breather, then the rest of the game I felt fine.”
You can reach James Bewers on Twitter @JamesBewers_TDR