BATON ROUGE, La. — Brayland Skinner glared down the line with menacing intent.
As Skinner began a slow trot toward first base, the normally raucous crowd at Alex Box Stadium fell to a hush. The only noise outside of the Mississippi State dugout came from the party of purple-and-yellow-clad fans sitting 10 rows up the bleachers in right field, each anxiously awaiting a chance to catch the ball Skinner annihilated into the Louisiana night.
Added to MSU’s 2020 recruiting class late in the process primarily for his defense, it was Skinner’s bat and the three RBIs it accounted for that paced the No. 3-ranked Bulldogs to a 6-1 win over No. 19 LSU Friday in Baton Rouge.
“He’s a really good player, and a lot of our fans probably don’t know about him ’cause he gets hurt before the season starts and probably was going to be a starter when we started,” MSU head coach Chris Lemonis said. “It’s plus speed, and it’s a really good swing, and he’s a really good defender.”
Expecting to lose Rowdey Jordan to the MLB draft a season ago, Lemonis and his staff had narrowed on Skinner during the early part of last spring as a potential replacement. Planning to see Skinner play following a series against then-No. 4 Texas Tech in Biloxi in mid-March, COVID-19 quickly ended any chance the Bulldogs would have at getting an in-person look.
Friday, though, Skinner looked far from a late-in-the-process flier he arrived as. Working back from a broken wrist over the past few weeks, he’d been mostly limited this spring. Lemonis first inserted him as a defensive replacement in a March 3 game against Southern Miss. A handful of innings in the outfield have followed. Heading into Saturday, though, he’d only received three at bats.
Swinging at the first pitch he saw from LSU ace Jaden Hill, Skinner clobbered the ball well into the Diamond Deck bleachers and nearly cleared the structure entirely, giving the Bulldogs their first two runs of SEC play.
Two innings later, Skinner again plated fourth-year junior Josh Hatcher with a dribbled a single through the middle of the LSU infield for his third RBI in as many plate appearances.
The only thing that stopped the former Northwest Community College outfielder from stroking? Getting plunked by LSU reliever Ma’Khail Hilliard amid MSU’s three-run eighth inning.
“Felt good,” Skinner said of rebounding from his broken hand. “Felt like I was taking things as I should — very slow — since it was almost my dominant hand. Everything went good, and it felt good to be back.”
With Skinner shining beneath the lights of Tiger Stadium — the place where MSU quarterback K.J. Costello broke the SEC’s single-game passing record seven months back — that subtly glowed off in the distance, it was Bulldog ace Christian MacLeod’s left hook that guided the visitors on the bump.
MacLeod, like most pitchers, is a thinker. In media sessions, he breaks down his approach with a calculated and informed precision. On the mound, his stuff isn’t overpowering, but his location makes him deadly.
Through one inning Friday that usual accuracy was replaced with erraticism. It’s why he glared with such intent as he strode toward the dugout following the frame. But after a first inning in which he notched 24 pitches, MacLeod was lights out.
Using his four-pitch mix, he consistently located his breaking ball, while blowing by any impending bat with a fastball that sat high 80s and low 90s. Over his six innings of work, MacLeod rang up nine Tiger batters, including four of five between the third and fourth innings.
“Grinded through that (first inning) and ended up not giving up any runs and after that I just knew I had to put it behind me,” he said postgame. “I feel like I settled in — had gotten a feel for the crowd and everything. I just wanted to go back out there and pound the zone and mix my speeds up and work ahead of batters as best as I could, and I feel like that was a big part of it tonight.”
With Friday’s win in tow, MSU has now won eight consecutive games and stands one victory away from just its second series win over LSU in Baton Rouge since 2006.
Ben Portnoy reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @bportnoy15.
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