BATON ROUGE — LSU true freshman pitcher Lane Mestepey has earned honors as the Southeastern Conference’s Pitcher of the Week, the league office in Birmingham announced Monday morning.
Mestepey, a left-hander from Zachary, La., and Central Private School, made two starts during the past week against ranked foes Tulane and Ole Miss.
In Sunday’s 6-3 victory over SEC foe Ole Miss, a victory that gave the Tigers sole possession of first place in the conference, Mestepey pitched his second complete game of the season, scattering nine hits and yielding no walks as he won his fifth consecutive SEC start while lowering his ERA in conference games to 2.01. In each of his six conference outings, Mestepey has not gone fewer than 7 2/3 innings.
On Wednesday, he got no decision in a game that was eventually won by Tulane, 7-6, but Mestepey pitched brilliantly in front of a crowd of 11,669 at Zephyr Field, allowing only one earned run on five hits in 7 2/3 innings.
For the season, Mestepey is 7-0 with a 2.91 ERA, allowing just 19 walks in 77 1/3 innings. He has also yielded just two home run balls to the 331 batters he has faced in 2001.
Mestepey becomes the fourth Tiger to be honored by the league office, but the first pitcher to be honored. Position players Zeph Zinsman (February 26), Bryan Moore (March 5) and Ryan Theriot (April 9) were also honored by the conference this season. The last Tiger pitcher to be named SEC Pitcher of the Week was Brian Tallet, who earned honors on May 8 of last year after shutting out Kentucky.
The Tigers (27-11-1, 12-6 SEC), who are one game ahead of Mississippi State, Ole Miss and Tennessee in the overall SEC race, are back in action Tuesday to begin a home-and-home series with Northwestern State at Alex Box Stadium at 7 p.m. LSU will visit the Demons Wednesday in Natchitoches before returning home to host Vanderbilt in a three-game SEC series starting Friday.