The 2019 LSU baseball season finished with a heartbreaking 5-4 loss in 12 innings to Florida State. The Seminoles star third baseman Drew Mendoza singled home the winning run. Tigers Coach Paul Mainieri could have walked Mendoza, but decided to go after the Seminoles number three hitter.
“Mendoza had 69 strikeouts, I thought the next hitter, Martin, was more of a contact hitter and I thought we could throw the fastball by him, and we did a couple of em and with two strikes he was able to get the bat on the ball,” said Maineiri.
LSU rallied back from a three-run deficit to tie the game at four in the 8th inning, but could never get over the top. Florida State lefty reliever Antonio Velez pitched 4.2 innings of scoreless basball.
“Both teams didn’t want to lose, somebody has to end up losing at the end and it’s sad, our kids were playing with their hearts out and they were playing with their hearts out,” said Mainieri.
Devin Fontenot suffered the loss, but it’s hard to blame him for the defeat. Fontenot entered with one out in the sixth inning and pitched six innings of no-hit baseball before allowing a single in the 12th inning. Mainieri says it was a great effort by his hard throwing right-hander.
‘If we would have won the ball game, we would have been talking about it, 15 years from now,” said Mainieri.
Instead LSU fans are talking about a team that was ranked in the preseason number one, but failed to get to Omaha after getting swept by Florida State in the Super Regionals.
