LSU Gold

Purple Wins Fall Baseball World Series

by Bill Franques | Sr. Associate Communications Director
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Purple Wins Fall Baseball World Series

BATON ROUGE, La. — The Purple defeated the Gold, 7-1,  Friday night in Alex Box Stadium, Skip Bertman Field to win the LSU Baseball Fall World Series. 

Catcher Hayden Travinski and outfielder Wes Toups each drove in two runs, and starting pitcher Cole Henry fired two scoreless innings to highlight the Purple team’s victory.

Friday’s game marked the end of LSU’s six-week full-squad fall practice period. The Tigers open the 2020 season on February 14 by playing host to Indiana.

“Overall, I thought we had a very productive fall practice, and we learned a lot about our team,” said LSU coach Paul Mainieri. “The weather was great most of the time, so we were able to scrimmage the way we needed to, allowing our hitters and pitchers to get plenty of work. 

“I was very pleased with the competitiveness and work ethic of the team, and we built a lot of positive momentum heading into the spring.”

Henry, a sophomore right-hander, worked the first two innings of Friday’s game for the Purple, allowing no runs on one hit with four strikeouts. He combined with senior right-hander Matthew Beck and junior left-hander Brandon Kaminer to limit the Gold to one run on three hits.

“Cole was phenomenal, he looked like a Friday night starter in the SEC,” Mainieri said. “That was a good final fall outing for him, and now he can take a little bit of a break and get ready for the spring.”

Gold starting pitcher Jaden Hill worked a scoreless first inning, retiring three of the four batters he face while recording one walk. The outing was Hill’s first appearance on the mound since last February when he suffered an elbow injury.

“That was the highlight of the night for me,” Mainieri said, “just to see Jaden back out on the mound. I thought he was tremendous; he threw great, he threw hard and he threw strikes. He only had to throw 13 pitches to complete the inning, and it was great to see him back out there.”

Travinski lifted a sacrifice fly in the third inning and belted an RBI double to highlight a five-run fourth inning. 

The fourth inning also featured RBI singles by first baseman Cade Beloso and by Toups, who added another RBI single in the fifth.