LSU

LSU aims to regroup against Cajuns after Kentucky chaos

Glenn Guilbeau
gguilbeau@gannett.com

BATON ROUGE – LSU baseball coach Paul Mainieri was asked Sunday if his top-ranked team could gain anything from the adversity experienced in losing two of three to unranked Kentucky over the weekend.

The adversity being the fact that LSU was one out away from a 10-9 win in regulation Sunday before losing 12-10 in 11 innings and being one hop away from winning 4-3 in the 11th Friday before losing 5-4 in 12.

Mainieri, truly one of the most polite interviewees around, had to laugh as he ingested the question, and he could not just go with it this time.

“No, I can’t say anything is good about losing this series,” he said.

Mainieri, who spent frequent portions of the wild weekend with head in hands, finds his team tied for fourth in the overall Southeastern Conference standings at 5-4 after entering the weekend No. 1 in the nation in multiple polls.

The Tigers, 23-5 overall, dropped from No. 1 to No. 4 in the USA Today poll on Monday and from No. 1 to No. 3 in Baseball America.

“We just have to regroup and keep playing,” Mainieri said.

The Tigers will travel to Metairie on Tuesday to play Louisiana-Lafayette (15-10, 8-4 Sun Belt Conference) at Zephyr Field in the Wally Pontiff Classic at 7 p.m. Mainieri will start senior left-hander Kyle Bouman (0-1, 8.31 ERA) against ULL sophomore left-hander Connor Toups (1-1, 1.00 ERA). Then it’s off to Alabama to play the Crimson Tide (14-12, 4-5 SEC) Thursday through Saturday.

“It was a very odd series,” Mainieri said. “I’ve never seen the things I’ve seen this weekend.”

In LSU’s 5-4 loss on Friday, the Tigers could have taken more than a 2-0 lead in the second inning, but they were too fast for their own good. Jared Foster was stranded at third when Mark Laird lined out to left field to end the inning. Foster could have scored on what would have been a sacrifice fly by Laird if there was only one out at the time. But there were two outs because Chris Sciambra delivered the second out previously when he passed Foster on the bases after his RBI single to center. Foster held up between first and second to make sure the ball was not caught, and Sciambra ran past him and was called out.

Then in the 11th inning Friday, LSU had the bases loaded and two outs for Conner Hale, who hit the ball hard between first and second base for what looked like a game-winning single for a 4-3 victory. But the ball hit Alex Bregman as he ran from first to second for the third out. Kentucky scored two in the 12th and held on for the 5-4 win. If Bregman hops, LSU wins.

“That was a very unusual set of circumstances,” Kentucky coach Gary Henderson said Monday. “We give up a single, and their guy gets hit going to second base. That’s just being fortunate.”

There were also inside-the-park home runs on consecutive days. Chris Chinea hit one for LSU with two men on base in the eighth inning Saturday to give the Tigers a 5-2 lead. It was more of a typical inside-the-park homer, though. He hit it hard to center field, and when Kentucky’s Kyle Barrett dove and missed, the ball rolled all the way to the wall and lodged under it. Right fielder Marcus Carson threw his arms up for a ground-rule double call, which he got from the umpires.

But upon further review and a passionate argument by Mainieri, the umpires reversed the call as Alex Box ground rules state that a ball in clear view under the fence — which it was — is a live ball and must be retrieved. So Chinea was credited with the home run. Jared Foster added a two-run home run in the inning for a 7-2 lead, and the Tigers held on for a 7-3 victory.

On Sunday, Kentucky pinch-hitter Riley Mahan stepped up with two outs and nobody on in the top of the ninth with his team down 10-9. He lined to left field for an apparent single, but Foster dove and just missed. The ball rolled slowly about 15 feet before shortstop Bregman retrieved it in plenty of time to hold Mahan to a triple. But Bregman slipped and fell on his rear. By the time he gathered himself and threw home, Mahan was safe for a 10-10 tie. Kentucky (18-10, 4-5 SEC) scored two in the 11th for a 12-10 win.

“That’s catching a break,” Henderson said. “We had the same thing happen to us on Saturday. Not anything LSU did wrong. If Bregman doesn’t slip, we would’ve held up Riley. I mean, hell, how fortunate was that? Riley took his foot off the accelerator right before he got to third. Then when Alex slipped, he was told to go.”

Mahan, a freshman from Moeller High in Cincinnati, Ohio, thought he hit a single to begin with, but ended up with his first home run since high school.

“It was like Little League,” Mahan said Monday. “I thought I just had a base hit and ended up with a home run. That’s definitely one of the greatest plays I’ve ever been in. It was bizarre, but it was fun. As I rounded first, I saw them chasing it down. I didn’t see what happened. So then I was thinking triple. As I was getting to third, I kind of saw somebody fall down. I wasn’t sure what happened. Then the third base coach sent me in. It was great.”

Mahan scored easily on a head-first slide as Bregman’s throw went to the first base side. It was a closer play in the 11th when Kentucky started the inning just five minutes before the SEC travel curfew would have ended the game in a 10-10 tie as the Wildcats had to get to New Orleans to catch a plane home. The game started at 11 a.m. to avoid activation of the rule, but the game lasted three hours and 59 minutes.

“I didn’t even know about that curfew rule until somebody told me on the plane,” Mahan said. “We barely started the last inning in time. Then we got to the airport in New Orleans only about 20 minutes before the flight.”

And Kentucky, which had not taken a series at LSU since 2007, whisked away with a series win over the No. 1 team in the nation on the road despite committing nine errors — three in each game — to just two by LSU in the first game.

“A lot of unusual things happened. You don’t see things like that every weekend. We were very fortunate that we were able to give LSU the extra outs and still survive without falling apart,” Henderson said.

“It was a huge weekend — the best team weekend of the year,” Mahan said. “Everybody backed each other up. Great crowds all weekend. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity.”