Twenty-eight games into the season and nine games into Southeastern Conference play, LSU baseball coach Paul Mainieri assures his No. 15 Tigers haven’t fallen into an unclimbable hole.
Due to its well-publicized inexperience, LSU (19-9, 4-5 SEC) has looked vulnerable at times, even at home. The Tigers dropped a home series to Alabama for the first time since 1996 and endured its first loss to Tulane in Baton Rouge in the new Alex Box Stadium.
Nevertheless, LSU is 10 games above .500 and is coming off its first series win of the season against Auburn and midweek victory versus Southern.
In reality, a 3-3 outing in road conference series against Auburn and No. 3 Texas A&M is palatable for Mainieri.
But in comes No. 6 Vanderbilt, which ranked as high as No. 2 in one major poll, for a three-game set at Alex Box Stadium beginning at 6 p.m. tonight.
Even if the series won’t define LSU’s season, Mainieri isn’t minimizing what kind of opportunity lies in front of the Tigers.
“This is an opportunity to establish some real credibility nationwide,” Mainieri said. “You’re playing the No. 2-ranked team in the country, a team that has been in the finals of the College World Series for the last two years. And if we can go out there and have success this weekend then people are going to stand up and take notice and say, ‘LSU is LSU, again. They’re going to be able to compete.’”
The Commodores (24-5, 6-3 SEC), which took two of three from No. 8 South Carolina last weekend, bring a familiar brand of baseball to Baton Rouge under coach Tim Corbin — elite starting pitching and manufacturing runs with small ball.
Headlined by projected Thursday night starter Jordan Sheffield, the Vanderbilt pitching staff bests all SEC teams in hits allowed while ranking second in earned run average, opponent’s batting average, strikeouts and saves.
“They always have good arms every year,” said junior center fielder Jake Fraley. “That’s what Vanderbilt is really known for. We like to think it as it’s just going to be the same staff power wise, just like [Texas] A&M was. So, it’s not like it’s our first go-around with that.”
The offense leads the league in runs and sacrifice bunts and is tied for first in stolen bases and sacrifice flies. The Commodores are also second in SEC in walks.
While he is challenging his hitters to embrace to task of facing major-league caliber hurlers, Mainieri said quelling the Commodores’ leadoff hitter of each inning will be key, especially in what he expects will be a low-run contest.
“They’re the epitome of taking advantage of their opportunities because they go crazy on the basepaths,” Mainieri said. “Now, they run into a lot of outs. They’ve been thrown out stealing more than anybody … they do that because they know they also have a quality pitching staff — that if they do run into some outs, that they’re pitching staff is going to cover for them by holding the other team down. So, it gives them the opportunity to take a lot of risk.”
Because the series opener against Auburn was postponed, LSU is once again coming into a conference series on a short week, giving Mainieri reason to start junior left-hander Jared Poche’ on Thursday.
Mainieri said Poche’s finesse-like style of pitching is less taxing on him than Lange’s power approach would be on four days of rest.
Lange (2-2) is entering the series off his collegiate worst runs-allowed outing in Game 1 against Auburn, where he conceded a career-high seven earned runs in 6.2 innings.
However, Lange worked through a chaotic third inning to save the LSU bullpen for later in the series, which coaches and players commended him for accomplishing.
“It happens to the best of us,” junior catcher Michael Papierski said of Lange. “Nobody is perfect. He had to work through it. He did. He kept us in the game, like coach said, and gave us a shot to win.