The No. 19 Texas A&M baseball team welcomed the No. 20 LSU Tigers to Blue Bell Park on Thursday night in the opening game of a three game series.
The Tigers took the victory on Thursday 4-1 thanks to a strong pitching performance from their starter Zack Hess. The Aggies are now 21-9 (3-7 SEC) and the Tigers improved to 20-11 (6-4 SEC) with the victory.
“You have to cash in early,” A&M head coach Rob Childress said. “You’re only going to get so many opportunities. We had a couple of opportunities to get some big hits and we just didn’t do it. We hit some balls hard and they made some great plays in the outfield to stop some innings for us.”
LSU scored all four of its runs in the fourth inning off of Aggie junior starter Stephen Kolek. A string of three straight RBI hits gave the Tigers their runs and subsequently knocked Kolek out of the game in the fourth with two outs. The Aggies added their lone run in the ninth on freshman right fielder Will Frizzell’s opposite field home run.
LSU sophomore starter Zack Hess dominated the Aggies on Thursday. Hess tossed eight shutout innings, giving up just four hits, while striking out five and walking three. The 6’6 righty came into the game with a 4.93 ERA in 38.1 innings pitched, but certainly improved his stats with Thursday’s performance.
A bright spot from the Aggies in the loss was senior reliever Kaylor Chafin. Chafin had been struggling this year, but he threw 4.1 shutout innings, giving up just one hit, no walks, and struck out five.
“It felt good to finally be competitive for my team,” Chafin said. “I feel like I’ve been holding us back a little bit in the bullpen and it was good to get it going tonight. Now we’re a couple things away from being a great team like we’re supposed to be.”
The LSU offense was led by junior right fielder Antoine Duplantis, junior catcher Hunter Feduccia, and junior first baseman Bryce Jordan. Duplantis went 2-4 on the day with 2 RBIs, Feduccia went 1-3 with an RBI, and Jordan went 1-4 with an RBI. The A&M offense was led by Frizzell, junior second baseman Michael Helman, and sophomore left fielder Logan Foster. Frizzell went 1-4 with the solo home run, Helman went 2-3 with a double, and Foster went 1-3 with a walk.
Game two of the series is set for Friday at Blue Bell Park. First pitch is scheduled for 6 p.m.