Tigers need to clean up sloppy fielding heading into four home games

Fifteenth ranked Louisiana Tech popped No. 8 LSU’s record-setting opening weekend balloon Wednesday night.

It didn’t help matters the Tigers kept handing needles to the host Bulldogs with five LSU errors leading to four Tech runs in an 11-6 win by the home team.

“Literally the volume of mistakes, I just I've never really seen a game like that before,” said first-year LSU head baseball coach Jay Johnson, whose team scored 51 runs in its season-opening series sweep of Maine. “We're not going to have a defensive night like that again the rest of the season. Like that's just not going to happen.

“Our (three) players at the top of the order aren't going to go for 0 for 13 very often. It was a tough game. It was a bad game. Yet you look up in the sixth inning, we’re down by a run.

“I want to give some credit to our guys for getting back to that spot. I think if we can do that competitively. that's a good sign going forward. I'm glad we're playing four games this weekend.”

The Tigers (3-1) play Towson (0-4) on Friday at 6:30 p.m. and on Sunday at 12 noon and play defending SWAC champion Southern (2-2) Saturday at 1:30 p.m. and Sunday at 5:30 p.m.

Johnson didn’t want to reveal his starting pitching rotation for the weekend other than sophomore Blake Money is starting in game one.

Money threw a two-hit (both singles) shutout in seven innings vs. the Black Bears last Friday in a 13-1. He had a career-high 10 strikeouts, retired the first seven batters that he faced, later retired 10 consecutive Maine hitters and allowed just one Maine base runner to advance beyond first base over the course of seven innings.

“He's got plenty of ability,” Johnson said of Money. “I trust his ability to get ready for his outing. Seven innings, two hits, no runs, 10 strikeouts every time out is unrealistic. But I think we'll be in games when he pitches and we can win games because of how he pitches.”