Texas A&M baseball showed up when they needed to most and claimed their first SEC series win of the 2018 campaign, defeating LSU two games to one.
On a cold and windy weekend in College Station, the No. 19 Texas A&M Aggies took two out of three games from the No. 20 LSU Tigers to improve to 23-9 overall on the season. The weekend was highlighted by Mitchell Kilkenny’s complete game on Saturday to seal the series win.
Kilkenny was named a Midseason First Team All-American by Perfect Game USA right before the series began and responded with his best outing of the year so far. Texas A&M struggled mightily mounting any kind of offense on Thursday evening but came back well Friday and did just enough Saturday to close it out.
Game 1: LSU defeats Texas A&M 4-1 (Full Box)
The Aggies bats were nowhere to be found Thursday night as LSU claimed the opening game of the series with a 4-1 victory. Overall, Texas A&M went 5-for-32 at the plate and the only run came late in top of the ninth thanks to a Whammy from Will Frizzell. Michael Helman led the Aggies, going 2-for-3 at the plate and a walk. Logan Foster and Aaron Walters were the only other Aggie players who recorded hits.
The biggest issue for Texas A&M Batters? Zach Hess. The LSU started was in no mood for Texas A&M hits and dominated with his high fastball. Hess picked up his fifth win of the year, going eight innings allowing just four hits and struck out five. What really stood out to me was Hess’s ability to produce easy fly outs for his defense to take care of. Devin Fontenot finished the Aggies off in the ninth, allowing the single run off of Frizzell’s home run.
Stephen Kolek on the other hand has now lost all four of his SEC starts and is now facing a possible rotation change. Once again, Kolek could not get through the batting order a second time, allowing four runs on five hits in just 3.2 innings of work.
The biggest bright spot of a rough Thursday was the performance of Kaylor Chafin. The senior reliever cruised through 4.1 innings of work, allowing just one hit, striking out 5 and looking very much like the Kaylor Chafin of 2017 that most A&M fans are used to seeing.
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