STARKVILLE — ”Sorry about that, y’all,” Mississippi State head coach Chris Lemonis said while leaving his postgame press conference Tuesday. “That was embarrassing.”
After the Bulldogs’ worrying start to the 2023 season got even worse, Lemonis’ assessment was understandable.
Louisiana–Monroe came to Dudy Noble Field and downed MSU 11-5 thanks to some hot bats, including Michelle Artzberger, who hit a pair of home runs to drive home five runs.
The Bulldogs (2-2) had a decent start on the mound with Bradley Loftin striking out eight through four innings of work, but an early defensive mistake got things going for the Warhawks (3-1). With two away in the first the Bulldogs should have gotten the third out on an easy chopper to Lane Forsythe, but the shortstop dropped the ball trying to toss it to second base as Artzberger slid in. Riley Davis drove Artzberger home with the next at bat for the Warhawks.
It was an inning that maybe summed up Mississippi State’s current situation too well, with some nice pitching on display but a walk, a costly error and an easy hit adding up to give the visitors the lead early on.
Errors and poor pitching piled up over the course of the game, but ultimately the lack of response on offense became the bigger problem.
“I think our guys felt like they were going to come in, just swing it and hit homers everywhere,” Lemonis said of his team’s poor offensive approach, “and you know, we don’t have great strike zone discipline in the first four or five innings. We didn’t make the guy work; we’re just trying to get our swings off, and that was the biggest thing.”
The defensive problems would have been less costly if the Bulldogs’ bats had answers, but the batters just couldn’t get anything going on offense. Through the first six innings, the lineup managed just one hit. The pressure added up on Loftin, and he managed to get his eighth and final strikeout of the day to get out of the jam in the fourth, but his successor on the mound fared much worse.
Tyson Hardin came in at the top of the fifth and was in trouble almost immediately. He walked the leadoff hitter, Kade Dupont, and Artzberger drove the ball over the left-field wall. Two more singles followed before a meeting at the mound to calm things down, but it didn’t help much as the very next pitch turned into an RBI single down the left-field line.
From there things unraveled, with the visitors producing a four-run sixth and a three-run seventh inning to build an 11-0 lead before the Bulldogs could muster up a response. The relief effort was mixed at best and disastrous at worst, with Lemonis drawing attention to it afterwards as an area that has been alarming as a whole this season.
“I knew Loftin was going to throw well, he’s special,” Lemonis said, evaluating the pitching. “I thought our freshmen, (Evan) Siary and (Brock) Tapper, threw really well, but we’ve got to play better defense, and we’re going to have to pitch in the middle innings. Right now it’s killing us. I mean Tyler Davis has been our best guy the entire spring. He’s been unbelievable, and we’ve been swinging it really well. It’s just not a good outing.”
Luke Hancock’s two-run shot in the bottom of the seventh got the Bulldogs on the board, but they managed only three more runs and fell short of the miracle comeback over the eighth and ninth innings.
The team captain rued the team’s mistakes but is already thinking about Game 2 on Wednesday.
“Yeah I mean, we’re going to have to; we play the same team tomorrow,” he said when asked about rallying from the defeat. “We just have to be ready to go when we get to the ballpark tomorrow. From the first pitch until the last pitch, we’ve got to be ready to fight, because tonight they came out and punched us in the mouth.”
From behind home plate, Hancock had the best view in the park of what went wrong, and he echoed what Lemonis said about things not adding up after how the team looked leading up to this season.
“All fall, all spring, we were a great defensive team,” he said. “We’ve just got to get back to that. Like I said, just maybe a little bit of pressing, but I feel like we’ll come out tomorrow and play good defense.”
The Bulldogs have less than 24 hours to regroup. They face ULM again at 3 p.m. Wednesday before Arizona State comes to town for a big weekend series at The Dude.
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