Hits would help LSU end mediocrity

Published 5:39 am Wednesday, April 12, 2017

Odd ball as it sounds, LSU may have pitched its way out of a hitting slump at Arkansas over the last weekend.

Probably too early to tell.

But that’s the working theory here.

It’s way too easy to overanalyze when it comes to baseball, a game so fickle it often defies common logic or good sense.

A year ago, for instance, LSU was muddling through a nondescript season, still with genuine concerns that the Tigers would host an NCAA regional. There was a particularly rough night in progress at home against Arkansas — probably a coincidence — when a wayward ’possum wandered into left field and the Tigers for some reason used it as a cue or an omen or something, but mainly to catch fire and rally from a 9-3 deficit to not only win that particular game but to the turn the whole blasted season around.

It’s become part of LSU baseball lore, and also sold a fair amount of “Rally ’Possum” T-shirts.

Keen observers are reading the same sort of magic into a strange weekend for LSU in Arkansas.

The Tigers were bombed 9-3 in the first game, still haven’t properly explained how they won the second game, and the third game was up for grabs until the final out.

So they went home, somehow, with a conference series win in their pocket and just a game out of first place in the SEC West Division.

That, even though head coach Paul Mainieri seemed to think Arkansas was the best team LSU has seen this year. Keep in mind that his team had lost the previous two SEC series and had largely been written off by a fan base that’s been around LSU baseball long enough to know better.

The turnaround, however, is being widely heralded by “experts” who study such things as the “turning point” of the season, although it’s yet to be determined where they’re pointed.

But whenever you can return from a tough road trip grinning you like you stole something, it has a little more meaning.

And that’s fine.

But at some point LSU is still going to have to hit, preferably in key situations, sometimes against good pitching.

So you want to point to that ninth-inning explosion in the middle game that capped a comeback from an 8-1 deficit?

If you read the fine print in the five runs the Tigers scored there to complete the rally for a 10-8 mega-comeback in Saturday’s game, it was more about what Arkansas did wrong than what LSU did right.

“The goal was really just to get the tying run to the plate at some point,” Mainieri said.

OK.

There was a walk, a hit batsman and, yes, one actual base hit to load the bases and set the stage for one of those things the good LSU teams seem to do from time to time.

Another batter was hit — Cole Freeman’s helmet got donked — to score the first run and keep the bases loaded.

Another run scored on a wild pitch, moving the unlikely tying run to third and the go-ahead run to second ?— but still with two outs.

If there were any ’possums around, this was when one would have disrupted things, but evidently the Baum Stadium security was on high alert and no marsupials breached the front line.

Something, though, was smiling on the Tigers.

Kramer Robertson hit a routine, should-have-been-the-final-out ground ball that shortstop Jax Biggers promptly threw about 20 feet high somewhere near first base, allowing both runners to score.

How nuts was it?

It was only the second error of the entire season for Biggers.

“Things just kept happening,” Mainieri said. “We had a little bit of good fortune to take the lead.”

But, oh, there was more.

It was another “hit,” technically, by Greg Deichmann, but only because official scoring rules don’t know any other way to handle it when a second baseman loses his footing and falls down on another routine ground ball, in this case allowing Robertson to score from second with a welcomed insurance run.

It makes for a great story.

But it doesn’t sound much like a hitting epiphany.

Maybe it was blind luck.

Or just baseball being baseball again.

Sure, you give the Tigers credit for hanging in there, playing all 27 outs no matter how bleak and hopeless the situation looked. They had momentum from the second-largest road comeback in 33 years.

So LSU picked up where it left off the next day and … well, they did manage two runs, on something like six hits. It was enough because freshman Eric Walker pitched a four-hit shutout against the best lineup he’s ever seen.

In fact, look at what really happened.

Over the first 15 innings of the stay in Fayetteville, Arkansas battered LSU’s top two starters and outscored the Tigers 17-4.

Over the final 12 innings, LSU outscored the Hogs 11-0.

Notice the zero there — against a really good hitting team.

That was the key.

If some bats really come to life to support those arms, the Tigers might be on to something.

l

Scooter Hobbs covers LSU

athletics. Email him at

shobbs@americanpress.com