#2 ranked LSU beat #1 ranked Georgia on Friday 8-4, and then again on Sunday 7-5 to take a huge SEC series on the road against probably the best team we will play in the conference. Those two wins were sandwiched around a 10-8 loss on Saturday.
The stars of the series were Anthony Renaudo, Louis Coleman, Matty Ott, Micah Gibbs, Mikie Mahtook, and a few others.
Renaudo gutted out 6 shutout innings on Friday despite a very high pitch count and sporadic wildness that kept Georgia runners on the basepaths most of the night. Louis Coleman pitched 10 1/3 innings in the series, coming in for 2 1/3 innings of relief in which he allowed only 1 run, and pitching 8 innings on Sunday. Matty Ott got the save on Sunday, coming in with a 2 run lead in the bottom of the ninth and striking out the side despite allowing the tying run to get on base on a little nubber of an infield hit..
Micah Gibbs had a pair of home runs in the series. Mikie Mahtook hit in every game, including a 2-run home run on Sunday.
The bats seemed to come alive this weekend, though you would like to see us convert that into a blowout win or two. While this weekend was a big improvement, Blake Dean was still fairly quiet at 3 for 12 with only one extra-base hit (a double) and no RBI. Only once in the series did we have an inning with more than 3 runs, our 4-run 3rd inning on Friday, featuring home runs by Schimpf and Ochinko. We plated runs, but did not dominate offensively. Baseball can be funny that way, as we'll probably be tearing the cover off the ball in a couple weeks.
The relief pitching outside of Ott and Coleman still has a lot of work to do. Georgia scored 3 of its four runs in the 9th inning with Jordan Nicholson and Paul Bertuccini pitching. On Saturday, Ryan Bird took over for a struggling Austin Ross and gave up 4 runs in 4 innings. On Sunday, we went the whole way with Coleman and Ott.
It was a huge series win for the Tigers, and marks the 4th conference series win of the year for the Tigers, all split decisions. Next week the Tigers will be visiting my home and taking on the struggling Alabama Crimson Tide. Alabama hits the ball a ton, but is only a .500 team on the year in the conference. The schedule eases up in general now that we're past the Bulldogs. We're still in 2nd in the division, and it's time to start moving up.
This is a pretty lame baseball writeup, but I'm just filling in until Poseur gets back in the swing of things from his move.