Tennessee on balance is a more talented team than LSU, and this weekend's series between the two college baseball powers was in Knoxville. But talent wasn't the reason the Vols found ways to win all three games, and the Tigers found ways to lose all three.
Wes Rucker
If you can forget for a moment that LSU has a 3-12 record — and, boy howdy, it's hard to forget that —and focus only on what you saw at Lindsey Nelson Stadium the past three days, you saw those Tigers still have plenty of talent. They don't have Paul Skenes or Dylan Crews, obviously, but they still have some really dangerous hitters who will make good money playing this game, and they have upper-90s arms coming out of their eras.
LSU also didn't play badly the past three days in Knoxville, save for two costly errors in Friday's opener. The Tigers mostly played solid baseball. But Tennessee consistently and relentlessly topped LSU in the biggest moments, so a team that played well enough to get at least one win got swept from whence bayou it came.
Sunday's 8-4, sweep-clinching Tennessee fit snuggly with the rest of the weekend. LSU never went away, but it never made a play in moments where one play could have changed everything.
The Tigers led just 4.5 of the 27 innings played in Knoxville over the weekend, but they out-hit Tennessee, 26-23. But they also left 24 runners on base, compared to the Vols' 16.
Nearly every single time the Vols absolutely needed to make a pitch over the weekend, they made the pitch. Nearly every time they Vols absolutely needed a hit over the weekend, they got a hit. Nearly every time the Vols needed to play simple pitch and catch over the weekend, they played simple pitch a catch. The one time the Vols tried a sacrifice bunt — something they had barely tried and never executed this season — they got a perfect sacrifice bunt. And that bunt came late in Sunday's finale, and it came from senior utility man Ethan Payne, who rarely plays in SEC games and hadn't left the dugout all weekend.
Every single time the Vols absolutely needed steel and stones from their bullpen, they got it. All four runs their bullpen allowed came when they had leads of at least three runs. When those four-run leads on Saturday and Sunday turned into two-run leads, Tennessee's bullpen flipped the kill-mode switch and gave LSU tonight. The Tigers did absolutely nothing late in any of the three games when Tennessee's lead was two runs or less. Nate Snead, Aaron Combs and Andrew Behnke were fantastic. All four bullpen runs were allowed by veteran senior southpaw Kirby Connell, but they came with an asterisk. Tennessee lead by three-plus runs when Connell got touched up, and walks are the only unforgivable sins in those situations. He filled up the zone, and he got touched up a couple times. When Connell needed to flip the switch himself Friday night, he did it. And when Tony Vitello gave the ball to Combs after Connell allowed a two-run Tommy White home run on Sunday, Combs looked the best he's looked all season. He retired all six batters he faced, earning his first save of the season.
Combs was a fitting figure on the mound to cement the weekend sweep. He'd gotten hot in each of the first two games but never got called to the mound, and he'd gotten loose a couple times Sunday before finally charging through the breach and running to the mound. He had to have been a bull in a cage down there, but he kept his composure and directed his physical and mental energy into the proper channel — the 60 feet, 6 inches between the pitching rubber and home plate. His fastball tops at around 94 mph, which pales in comparison to Sneed's 101-plus missiles, but his curveball might be the nastiest pitch on Tennessee's staff, and his arm angle is unique, so he's electric in his own way.
Everything in Tennessee's weekend started where it always starts in this sport —pitching, pitching, pitching —but the Vols were just as good at the plate and in the field when they needed to be good in those areas. Seven of Tennessee's eight Sunday runs came with two outs, and many of them came with two strikes, as well.
Tennessee's only error all weekend —an errant throw from star junior third baseman Billy Amick —was a costly one, and it put an unearned run on the board in the second inning on Saturday's game. That run gave LSU its only lead of the weekend, but even that inning featured some huge moments for the Vols that proved vital to the day's ultimate triumph. The Tigers still had runners on second and third and no outs after that error, but junior right-handed war horse Drew Beam navigated through a tough part of LSU's lineup without letting either of those runners cross the plate.
Amick atoned for that mistake later in Saturday's game, too, launching a solo homer into the left field porches to extend Tennessee's lead to 3-1 in the eighth. Amick — who returned this weekend from an eight-game absence with an appendix removal —acquitted himself well defensively the rest of the weekend.
Tennessee isn't a perfect team, and Tennessee didn't have a perfect weekend. But Amick was hardly the only Vol to atone for a mistake later in one of this weekend's games. When senior left-handed starter Zander Sechrist had a runner picked off first but the Vols goofed and still let him steal second base, they turned around and picked off another runner in the same way later in the inning and executed to get that out. When star junior second baseman Christian Moore failed to finish a routine double-play ball in Saturday's game, he beautifully finished another routine double-play ball to end that same inning.
Even when the Vols made a big or biggish mistake, they corrected it. Contrast that with LSU, which failed to capitalize on so many opportunities to put or keep runs off the board throughout the weekend. That's why Tennessee swept the series and improved to 30-6 overall and 10-5 in SEC play, and it's why LSU dropped to 22-15 overall and 3-12 in league play. That's why the Vols are again contenders this season, and it's why the reigning-national-champion Tigers are not. Both of those teams lost a ton of production and star power on the mound, in the field and in the batter's box, but one of them handled those losses a hell of a lot better than the other. Tennessee didn't lose Skenes, but it did lose multiple first-round-pick pitchers. Tennessee didn't lose Crews, but it lost several hitters who will make good money playing this game.
There really wasn't much of a talent gap between the two rosters on display this series, especially when you remember Tennessee is temporarily without a future first-round pick in sophom*ore pitcher AJ Russell. This writer would rather have the Vols' roster because of the bats, but the amount of pure petrol in that LSU pitching staff was staggering. The Tigers trotted out several pitchers whose numbers weren't great but whose velocity and spin rates were top shelf. Even in a conference as carnivorous as the SEC, LSU has no business being 3-12 in league play. Should the Tigers be title contenders? No, they shouldn't. They probably don't have enough depth offensively. But they have arms most college pitching coaches would crawl on broken glass to secure. LSU has some elite arms withering on the vine. These eyes saw what they saw all weekend, and they had a direct view behind home plate.
But that's LSU's problem, and LSU is a blessed program that can cry its current tears of frustration into a history book with seven national championships and 19 College World Series appearances. It's down bad at the moment, but bad times never last long for that bunch. It'll be back, and it'll be a beast.
The Tigers had a chance to start salvaging their miserable season this weekend, and they played well enough to give themselves a chance to do that. But good won't beat Vitello's Vols in their own yard. Lindsey Nelson will be much bigger next season, but other parks will remain bigger. Few are as hostile to opponents, though, and few feature teams as good as this one. This Tennessee lineup is savage from stem to stern. It starts with a trinity of terror in the top three spots — Moore, Blake Burke and Amick — but it doesn't leave pitchers any room to breathe in the other six spots. And no matter how Vitello configures those other six spots, he has at least a handful of very good options to play with off the bench.
You don't necessarily need to be perfect to beat this team in Knoxville, but you usually need to be really, really good. You can't just create chances to score. You have to score. You can't just make some good pitches. You need to make a lot of really good pitches, and some elite pitches. You can't just make nearly all the routine plays in the field. You have to really flash the leather a few times. You need to do all those things, or you need the fortune to run into this team on the kind of a terrible day all baseball teams have here and there.
Talent had something to do with what we saw this weekend, but it wasn't the biggest difference. Details in key moments were the difference, and those details earned the Vols a sweep despite them rarely looking their absolute best.
