Tennessee baseball played well for seven innings, building a 4-1 lead thanks to a spectacular start from Landon Mack. But it all came cratering down in the eighth inning as LSU scored five runs to take a lead it would not relinquish in a 7-5 series-opening victory.
The trouble quickly started after Josh Elander went to his bullpen to begin the eighth inning. Mack had retired 14 straight batters and thrown total 94 pitches when the seventh inning ended and the Vols elected to go to Brandon Arvidson.
“Mack was rolling through his deal where he’s got his deal with diabetes,” Elander said. “He’s in and out, he’s got 94 pitches, seven innings, gives us a chance to win. I thought — I mean, again, one walk, 10 punch outs. That’s as good as we’ve seen him throw.”
The bottom of the seventh inning was 14 minutes as LSU made an in-inning pitching change, Tennessee scored a run and threatened to do more. But Elander said that did not have any impact on the decision to pull Mack and that the plan was already to go to Arvidson to begin the eighth inning.
Things quickly spiraled for one of Tennessee’s top bullpen arms. Arvidson walked the first three batters he faced before retiring top LSU hitter Jake Brown.
“Just spraying the ball a little bit,” Elander said. “I mean, credit to LSU. They did a good job of kind of squeezing him there, but at that point you got to come in and attack the strike zone. We have 100% confidence in Arv to be able to do that, and for whatever reason he wasn’t able to get it over the plate.”
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Tennessee’s first-year head coach said that they wanted the left-handed Arvidson to face the left-handed Brown before making a pitching change. Despite Arvidson’s struggles to find the strike zone, Elander said they did not truly consider pulling him until he faced Brown.
“Again, got confidence in him,” Elander said. “I want to give him a leash and let him run. You know, he’s been phenomenal for us at points throughout the course of the year.”
After Arvidson retired Brown, Tennessee went to right-handed pitcher Bo Rhudy. The Kennesaw State transfer truck out Omar Serma Jr. on three pitches and looked like he might get out of the inning. Instead, Derek Curiel hit an opposite field grand slam into the first deck of left field porches.
Seth Darder made it back-to-back home runs before nine-hole hitter Chris Stanfield took Chandler Day deep in the ninth inning to make it a 7-4 game.
“Clearly, the wrong decision, looking back now, but the theme of the deal needs to be, you got a lead late in the game, you got to attack the strike zone, dominate the average play,” Elander said. “Same things we’ve been talking about for weeks around here, and starts with me. I got to put them in a better position to get that thing done right there.”
With the loss, Tennessee falls to 3-7 in SEC play and has dropped its lat four games all in gut-punching fashion. The Vols look to get back in the win column Saturday night in game two of their weekend series against LSU.
