The game was in the balance. LSU and Wake Forest sat dead-locked at 2-2, with Tre' Morgan standing on third base, Hayden Travinski at first. No outs, Cade Beloso at the plate.
The call for Morgan? "Red," meaning on any contact and he's in an all-out sprint to home, with the exception of a fly ball where he'd be tagging up.
That's where it all went wrong for LSU, with Beloso rolling over a 2-1 pitch from Michael Massey for a rare grounder down the third base line. It was going to take a perfect play by third baseman Brock Wilken and a perfect stab and tag by catcher Bennett Lee, a Tulane transfer. That's what Wake Forest got, with Lee's glove glancing off Morgan's knee milliseconds before his right hand brushed home plate.
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"I knew he was going to have an awkward throw, so I tried to get a little over to get in the way," Morgan said, "but he made a great play.”
Morgan had led off the inning with a double, then advanced to third on a round ball up the middle by Travinski that was misplayed by 2nd baseman Justin Johnson.
The play at home was only the first out of the inning. Beloso and Travinski stood at first and second, but Gavin Dugas hit into an inning-ending double-play and a golden opportunity was squandered. Lee came through again in the bottom of the eighth inning for a go-ahead RBI single and Wake Forest went on to win a colossal showdown 3-2 and sit in the catbird seat for a spot in the championship series. LSU will get a rematch with Tennessee on Tuesday in the loser's bracket. Still, there was no second-guessing the decision to send Morgan on contact. It was the correct one.
“It’s a ground ball, we were going, because if he doesn’t go then we’re going to hit into a double-play and it makes it very difficult. Now you have a man on third standing there with two outs," Johnson said. "Now you need a base hit, so it’s very simple baseball, actually. And, again, I don’t know that Cade Beloso has hit a ground ball to third base the entire season, and so you have to tip your hat to Massey for executing the 2-0 pitch that he did and got him to swing through, and then the 2-1 pitch.”
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It could be argued that Wilken's only real play was to home, as he faded into foul territory outside of third to field the ball. It's highly unlikely a double-play could've been executed. But even with that detail, it's hard to argue. You're making the call prior to the ball being put into play, and Beloso has a tendency to pull the ball. Had Morgan been slow playing and hovering around the bag, or pulled up halfway, he'd have likely been caught in a rundown or tagged out, which would've been the same result.
“You have to send the runner there so we' stay out of the double play, and it’s a heck of a play by Wilken," Johnson said. "I mean if it skips, if he throws it and it bounces off Tre’, we’re ahead 3-2 and we probably have runners on second and third. So, again, in championship environments, as we said in our game on Saturday, your dudes have to be dudes, and [Wilken] was a dude on that tonight.”
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