Desperately trying to avoid being swept in the opening weekend of conference play and needing an offensive spark to score an amount of runs that would translate to a win, Paul Mainieri reshuffled his lineup that has, for the most part, remained the same all season long. He moved some player’s places in the order around and benched a couple of typical starters.
“I just thought shaking up the lineup would get us out of a rut,” Mainieri said. “I think it worked out okay.”
After a one-run top of the first inning for Mississippi State, LSU answered with a two-run bottom of the inning. Tre’ Morgan, batting in the leadoff spot for the first time this season, led off with a walk then stole second base.
“Tre’ is a good base stealer,” Mainieri said. “It was a good opportunity right out of the gate to put a little pressure on him and just show our players that we weren’t going to play afraid.”
Brody Drost, hitting second in the order as the designated hitter, also for the first time, walked as well. Morgan scored on a wild pitch after a Dylan Crews, who batted third for the first time, fielder’s choice moved him to third. Crews later scored on a Gavin Dugas ground out. The Tigers led, 2-1, for the first time all series.
“The kid that pitched, I thought he might have a little trouble with his command against left handers,” Mainieri said. “So I wanted to put the two lefties right there at the top. We scored two runs without a hit there. We scratched a couple of runs across.”
The lead didn’t hold for long, as the Bulldogs tacked on a run in the third inning on a sacrifice fly. Dugas collided with the left field wall to make the grab, but the runner scored easily as Dugas collected himself.
LSU retook the lead in the sixth inning on a Dugas solo home run. It was a towering shot into left field, so towering that the ball’s launch angle could not be tracked by LSU Baseball Data.
“Gavin Dugas gave us a big lift there,” Mainieri said. “Gavin has provided a lot of big moments for us already. He’s proven that he’s a legitimate SEC hitter.”
The Tigers added some insurance runs in the next inning from its new-look top of the batting order. Morgan hit a double in the right-center field gap to score Mitchell Sanford, and Drost followed him up with a home run. His line drive shot over the head of the right fielder and brought him and Morgan across the plate for LSU’s second and third run of the inning to extend the LSU lead to 6-2.
“I was looking for something I could hit hard,” Drost said. “I knew we needed to get some cushion. He started me off with two changeups. So I was expecting a fastball, saw the fastball and hit it hard.”
After coming on to relieve starter AJ Labas in the seventh inning, Ty Floyd struck out the side in a quick frame and came back out for the eighth. There, he allowed two hits and a walk, and the Bulldogs cut the Tiger lead to three runs. It was beginning to look like a late-inning rally that LSU is far too used to seeing.
Mainieri went to Devin Fontenot to complete the eighth inning. He inherited two runners on base with just one out, but induced two fly outs to end the opposition’s comeback attempt. He returned to close the game out in the ninth after LSU added two more runs in the bottom of the eighth, and added two more fly outs in a three up, three down inning to complete the four-out save to give LSU an 8-3 win, avoiding the weekend sweep.
“There’s been a lot of games through the years where I’ve felt like ‘we really need to win this game’,” Mainieri said. “Especially when I was first getting started and trying to make our teams believe we could win again at LSU and thinking, ‘man, this game today is a must win.’ I had that feeling today.”
