Baseball: Frustrating Reversal

UL baserunner Blake Trahan (4) crosses home plate to scores a run while South Alabama catcher Whitt Dorsey (10) waits for the ball during the Jaguars’ win Saturday at Tigue Moore Field. / Courtesy Brad Kemp/RaginCajuns.com

Tim Buckley, The Advertiser, May 12, 2013

Fifteen prior times this season, UL has scored five or more runs in the same inning – and in each game it happened, the Ragin’ Cajuns won.

Against the top team in the Sun Belt Conference, however, not even a six-run second inning would stand up Saturday night.

South Alabama rallied with nine unanswered runs to beat the Cajuns 9-6 in front of 2,821 at M.L. “Tigue” Moore Field, taking the first outing of a three-game Sun Belt series that concludes with a doubleheader – two nine-inning games – beginning at 1 p.m. today.

The conference-leading Jaguars used two home runs – right-fielder Nolan Earley’s three-run shot off of starter Austin Robichaux in the sixth and designated-hitter Dustin Dalken’s two-run, opposite-field drive off of Ryan Wilson in the eighth – to flip things on the Cajuns and improve to 38-13 overall, 18-7 in SBC play.

UL, which leads the nation in homers with 57 but failed to put one over the wall for the first time in 13 games, fell to 34-16, 15-10.

“We just didn’t pitch good enough,” Cajuns coach Tony Robichaux said. “But you want more runs that that. You hate to score in only one inning.”

UL manufactured the first two of its six behind RBI singles from Dylan Butler and Dex Kjerstad.

Ryan Leonards’ hard, high-hop grounder to South Alabama shortstop Graham Odom resulted in a fielding error, allowing Kjerstad to score.

Harrison drove in Leonards with a single, and Caleb Adams followed with a single to right-center that scored two more before the Jaguars got out of the second.

It stayed 6-0 until the fifth, when Nolan Earley doubled and scored from second behind a single up the middle by Dalken.

South Alabama got to within one with a four-run sixth in which Earley’s homer to right-center followed Nick Zaharion’s RBI single up the middle.

“That’s how fast a game can turn on you when you play a good team,” said Tony Robichaux, whose Cajuns entered the weekend – its last in the regular season at home – third in the Sun Belt, two wins behind South Alabama and one behind Troy.

“The bottom line is … we let that inning get away from us.”

Earlier in the sixth, Jaguars third baseman Bud Collura had reached on a two-out infield single that Austin Robichaux came off the mound toward the third-base line to field.

Robichaux made what would have been a highlight play as he fell to the turf, but Collura beat the pitcher’s spot-on throw to first.

The Cajun sophomore wasn’t effective again after that.

Robichaux walked the next batter he faced, allowed Zaharion’s single and then yielded Earley’s 2-0 count home run after challenging him with a fastball down the middle.

Tony Robichaux came to the mound for a meeting with his son after the walk, partly to encourage him to get out of the inning, partly to see if he was OK following the awkward fielding play.

“He (Austin) … said, ‘I’m good,’ ” Tony Robichaux said.

“It didn’t feel like (strained anything),” Austin Robichaux added. “I mean, I could have – but I don’t think that was the issue. I just couldn’t get the ball over for a strike.”

Austin Robichaux (no decision) was lifted immediately after the homer and replaced by Wilson, who lasted until giving up Dalken’s go-ahead homer and hitting the next batter he faced (Whitt Dorsey) in the eighth.

Three batters later Matt Hicks allowed Jeff DeBlieux a two-out, two-run single through the left side that extended South Alabama’s advantage to 9-6.

“He put a good swing on a good pitch and got it out of the ballpark,” Tony Robichaux said of Dalken, who hit a down-and-in breaking ball out to left. “That’s what really hurt us – two swings, five runs.”

Robichaux faulted his club for not doing “a good enough job of getting off the field with two outs.”

The Jaguars, meanwhile, got 7.0 innings of four-hit, shutout pitching from Anthony Izzio (1-0), who relieved starter Jarron Cito in the second and didn’t exit until Dylan Stamey came in to strike out Seth Harrison looking for the final out of the ninth.

“Their bullpen came in and just pitched better than ours did,” Tony Robichaux said. “We had a big momentum working, and nothing was really going their way, and … you’ve got to give that guy (Izzio) credit. He slowed us down, and then he stopped us.

“He (Izzio) cut the faucet off on us – and we didn’t shut the faucet off on them, and it leaked enough to where they got five runs on two swings, and when that happens it’s gonna do you in.

“They’re at the top of the league for a reason,” Robichaux added. “They can come back from being behind. … The bottom line is you have to play nine innings, and we didn’t.”