The Vanderbilt Commodores rode a seven-run first inning to an 8-2 victory in Game 1 over Mississippi State in the College World Series finals to move within a win of a second straight national championship.
Mississippi State had the crowd. Vanderbilt had a big lead and Jack Leiter on the mound, and that was plenty Monday night.
The Commodores (49-16) scored their seven first-inning runs off Christian MacLeod and Chase Patrick after Mississippi State (48-18) had taken a 1-0 lead in the top half on Kamren James’ homer into the left-field bleachers.
McLeod struggled for a second straight CWS start and got only two outs. The redshirt freshman left-hander walked two of the first three batters and hit two in a row to bring in Vandy’s first run. CJ Rodriguez’s two-run single and Isaiah Thomas’ RBI double brought on Patrick. Jayson Gonzalez greeted him with a three-run homer.
McLeod (6-6) lasted only 1 1/3 innings against Virginia last Tuesday in what at the time was his shortest outing of the season.
Leiter (11-4), the national strikeouts leader and a projected top-five pick in the Major League Baseball draft next month, allowed two runs and three hits and fanned eight in six innings. Nick Maldonado pitched three innings of shutout relief for his ninth save.
The Commodores didn’t do much offensively after the first inning. Three MSU relievers held them hitless over the next five innings.
Vandy won the 2019 title and is trying to become the first back-to-back national champion since 2011, when South Carolina won the second of two straight. There was no CWS last year because of the pandemic.
The Commodores won two of three in the regular-season series against Mississippi State in Nashville.
They advanced to the finals without completing bracket play. North Carolina State was removed from the tournament early Saturday because of COVID-19 protocols and the winner-take-all bracket final matching those teams was declared a no-contest.
Since the best-of-three finals started in 2003, 11 of the 17 Game 1 winners have claimed the national title.
