BATON ROUGE — One swing was all it took to put a dark cloud over a beautiful day in LSU’s Alex Box Stadium.
“That’s about as tough a loss as you can have,” LSU coach Paul Mainieri said. “That’s as hard as it gets right there.”
How tough?
The Tigers were one out from a second consecutive victory and taking the Southeastern Conference series from Texas A&M.
But Texas A&M’s Walker Pennington capped a four-run, ninth inning rally with a three-run homer with two outs as the Aggies (19-10, 3-6 SEC) shocked the Tigers with a 4-3 comeback.
The towering blow — a no-doubter with Saturday’s strong tailwinds — left the struggling Tigers 19-10, 5-4 in the SEC.
“I let my team down. I let my pitcher down,” said LSU closer Caleb Gilbert (1-1), who gave up a one-out walk and three hits. “I didn’t do what I was supposed to do to secure the series. Obviously it’s a long season, so I’ve got to learn from it and move on … but obviously it hurts right now.”
Gilbert got the second out on a called strike out before Hunter Coleman singled in the Aggies’ first run and brought Pennington to the plate as the go-ahead run.
“It (the pitch) was supposed to be outside, and I just left it in to middle,” Gilbert said. “He did what he’s supposed to do with it. I’ve just got to be better at that stage of the game.”
“We just couldn’t get it done there in the ninth inning,” Mainieri said. “I feel so bad for Caleb.”
In losing the series 2-1, the Tigers wasted two of their better pitching performances of the season.
Thursday it was Alex Lange with a hard-luck loss. Saturday it was freshman Eric Walker who deserved a better fate.
“Walker pitched a tremendous game,” Mainieri said. “It looked like we were going to get there.”
Walker had to wiggle out of jams in the first two innings.
But after stranding a runner at third in the first and leaving the bases loaded in the second, he retired 16 of the final 17 batters he faces before leaving after seven innings, having thrown 108 pitches.
He allowed three hits — none after the second inning — while striking out seven with one walk.
Hunter Newman pitched a scoreless eighth inning, but with him recently coming back from a back injury, Mainieri said he couldn’t go the ninth.
“When he got in trouble, he made some big pitches,” Mainieri said. “Ultimately he settled in and was really strong. But he couldn’t pitch any more after the seventh.
“I wish we could have extended the lead, but they stayed in the game and … we only had four hits, so we didn’t have that many opportunities.”
The Tigers made the most of them.
Kramer Robertson hit a two-run homer in the fourth — his second in as many days — and LSU added its other run in the fifth when Lake Charles’ Beau Jordan walked and scored on Zach Watson’s single through a draw-in infield.
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