After a heartbreaking loss in its first SEC contest on Friday, LSU baseball found itself unable to regroup on Saturday. The Tigers dropped Game 2 of their series against Vanderbilt, 11-3.
Unreliable pitching and poor defending in critical moments featured for LSU, who did not do itself any favors in the batter’s box. The inverse could be said for Vanderbilt. The Commodores made the most in scoring situations and punished the Tigers for their miscues.
That theme was evident from the first baserunner of the game for Vanderbilt. After a 1-2-3 first inning from LSU starter Cooper Moore, the Commodores led off the second inning with a single and a walk. Those runners would advance on a wild pitch, and one would score on a groundout to give Vanderbilt the lead.
LSU displayed some battle back in the fourth when Steven Milam scored to level the game at one. However, the tie would not last long. The Vanderbilt offense rattled off three straight hits, including a double, to push a run of its own across and take the lead back at 2-1.
Vanderbilt would not waiver from there. After freshman pitcher Wyatt Nadeau set the Tigers down in order in the fifth, the Vanderbilt bats would pick up where they left off.
Moore would, again, have a rocky start to the inning, letting the first three batters of the inning load the bases on a walk and two singles. That would end his day, presenting Ethan Plog with a herculean task of keeping the deficit at one with the bases loaded and nobody out.
Plog could not pull the miracle off, but he wasn’t helped by his defense. A ground ball from the first batter he faced resulted in a run scored and no outs recorded; first baseman Zach Yorke’s throw to attempt a force play at home was low, and catcher Omar Serna Jr. couldn’t corral it cleanly to record the out.
The bases remained loaded after the blunder, which meant that a walk to Braden Holcomb pushed a run home. The next batter drove in a run on a sacrifice fly, and the lid would be taken off the game when Chris Maldonado, pinch-hitting, roped a three-run homer to make it an 8-1 ballgame.
Zion Theophilus came on and stopped the bleeding in the fourth, but allowed four runners to reach in the fifth inning without a hit. That set the table for Vanderbilt to score two more and put LSU down nine.
The offensive miracle that put LSU in a position to win on Friday was not to be on Saturday. Serna would drive in a pair in the seventh inning. Those runs were the only response that the Tigers managed to articulate in the remainder of the game.
In his second career start, Nadeau held the LSU offense to three runs on four hits. He also set down 10 Tigers on strikes in the longest outing of his collegiate career. The freshman threw north of 100 pitches over seven innings of work.
With the loss, LSU is now the loser of six of its last seven games. A series win out of the cards, the Tigers look to salvage something on Sunday and avoid a sweep against Vanderbilt. The two sides will get underway at 3 p.m.
