The Louisiana Ragin' Cajuns defeated LSU on Tuesday night at the Wally Pontiff Classic and have swept the two-game season series against LSU this year.

During the 3-1 victory on Tuesday, Hogan Harris got the start and on the surface his stat line looks very good but below the surface he struggled to get ahead of hitters early in the count. In fact, of the 17 batters he faced, he threw 12 first pitch balls to hitters, and if you're doing the math at home, only five first pitch strikes. Now, Harris was able to get through four innings, striking out five and walking only one but he consistently put himself behind the eight-ball and had to fight back into counts. Give him credit though, he was able to fight through four innings and limited LSU's potent offense to only one unearned run.

Comparatively, lets take a look at what the freshman lefty Austin Perrin was able to do last night. He pitched 3.1 innings, scattered four hits, walked two, struck out one, and was a key component for the Cajuns picking up the victory. Perrin was super effective in the middle innings Tuesday night keeping LSU hitters off-balanced with his very sharp change-up. In addition, he was consistently getting ahead of hitters which put them in a more defensive count, allowing Perrin to mix and match his pitches in order to attack. In terms of first pitch strikes, Perrin tallied 11 of them against the 16 batters he faced.

Perrin's outing wasn't completely clean, like I said he did allow four hits and two walks but in innings he was able to complete, he stranded four Tigers on base. However, when he did allow base runners in his first three innings they were all of the two out variety. Why this was important was because, it limited the opportunities LSU had to manufacture runs and chip at the Cajuns lead.

The pitching staff will look to put together its first solid weekend series of the year this weekend as UL travels to Jonesboro, Arkansas to take on Arkansas State. The series starts on Thursday with Easter on Sunday.

 

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