In a hectic day for LSU athletics, LSU baseball brought a calmness with them to the ballpark today. A frantic outing yesterday under cloudy skies was something LSU wanted to amend for and both sides of the team did just that Saturday.
By a score of 5-1, LSU defeated Bethune-Cookman, with much thanks to a stellar game by pitcher Ty Floyd. Following a difficult start against Texas last Saturday, where he went four innings pitched and gave up four runs on five hits with four walks; Floyd remedied his mistakes with a 6.0 IP, two hit, one run and eight strikeout performance that helped LSU develop a comfortable run cushion.
The dangerous Floyd fastball was on full display; a pitch that is becoming one of the better ones on the team. Floyd tied his career high in strikeouts, a mark he set in his opening weekend Sunday start against Maine and set a new career high in innings pitched.
“I felt pretty good today,” Floyd said. “The first two, three innings, I felt good. I got off my groove for a minute, but then I came back into it the next few innings and I was able to find a groove where I was able to be more consistent with my fastball.”
Following Floyd was Eric Reyzelman, who pitched a fantastic three innings of relief. He is one of two qualifying pitchers on the team to have not given up an earned run this season, the other being freshman Samuel Dutton. Reyzelman had seven strikeouts and just two hits given up. He will be a trusted late-game reliever going forward, as Johnson had promised in the preseason.
“Winning starts and ends on the mound,” Johnson said. “We got great performances out of Ty and Eric. I think we struck out about 15 guys. We got a lot of weak contact and for the most part, took care of the ball well.”
“I’m just trying to hit my fastballs and let guys hit, so on days they do hit, I trust the guys behind me,” Reyzelman said. “On days that it’s a few more swing and misses, that’s just how it goes. I’m just happy to go out and hold them at bay.”
Offensively, the Tigers’ middle of the order continued their rampant production of runs. Jacob Berry carried on his tear at the plate with another home run, his third of the week and eighth of the season. Cade Doughty and Brayden Jobert added an RBI to their totals with a double and a single respectively.
However, the surprise was catcher Hayden Travinski, who was given the start as Alex Milazzo battles an injury and Tyler McManus was given a day off. He laced a double into the right field gap to score another run. Travinski played great defense behind the plate as well, throwing out a runner attempting to steal second base in Floyd’s last inning of work. Travinski had been recovering from surgery on his elbow, and that had held him out of play throughout the fall. This was the culmination of his recovery process today.
“Coach (Johnson) texted me this morning and said I was going to start, and it was exciting,” Travinski said. “It was a long road to get back here. I felt like a kid.”
Johnson and the Tigers will finish their last two non-conference games before the daily midweek game begins in SEC play. They will play Bethune-Cookman tomorrow at 1:00 PM and Tulane at 6:30 PM Tuesday night. The home stand will continue with Texas A&M to open SEC play this upcoming weekend.