By RON HIGGINS, Journal Sports
BATON ROUGE – LSU head coach Jay Johnson doesn’t like to lose games, but he can accept it if the Tigers play to his standards.
But if LSU doesn’t, even in a victory, then his postgame speeches in the locker room become very pointed.
The No. 2 Tigers (7-1) went 3-1 in the four-game set over the weekend in Alex Box Stadium. LSU swept Northern Illinois with wins of 10-2 and 5-2 on Thursday and Saturday respectively and split with Stony Brook losing 5-2 on Friday and winning 18-10 on Sunday.
What peeved Johnson were the impatient at-bats taken by his team in the loss to Stony Brook followed by the win over Northern Illinois.
The Tigers managed 6 hits vs. Stony Brook but also hit 4 first pitches for outs and 2 second pitches for outs. The next day, LSU had a mere 3 hits against Northern Illinois and hit 7 first pitches for outs and 3 second pitches for outs.
“We have a brand of baseball that we play and it hasn’t been that the last two days for sure,” Johnson said after the Saturday win over Northern Illinois when he reached 100 victories faster than any LSU baseball coach in history. “What happens is guys are swinging earlier in the count when they should not be and that’s part of what we need to clean up.
“The game went nine innings, was over in (just) 2 hours and 5 minutes (actually 2:09) and it had nothing to do with the pitch clock. It made me want to vomit. It’s just very out of character.”
Apparently, the windy weather throughout the series psyched out the Tigers at the plate. Winds of 12 to 15 miles per hour blowing from left field to right field held up any hard-hit fly ball.
“You do something right (at the plate) but you don’t get the result,” Johnson said. “Then guys are searching for that hit to make up for the bad results that they got. And then they’re outside their plan and mediocre pitching takes advantage of it. And that’s not that’s not where we’re going with this thing.”
LSU batted .290 for the weekend, saved by its 17 hits in the Sunday series finale vs. Northern Illinois. Before that, the Tigers’ batting average in the first three games was .198.
“Every week, every game, we need to kind of slow down (at the plate), be within ourselves and do what we do,” said LSU outfielder Mac Bingham, who had the Tigers’ lone homer of the series to left field with a 3-run shot in Saturday’s win over Northern Illinois. “We have a lot of confidence in the dugout.”
Sophomore outfielder Paxton Kling was LSU’s best hitter in the season’s second weekend, batting .667 (6-for-9) with one homer, three RBI, five runs, six walks, three hit-by-pitches, two steals and a .789 on-base percentage. He reached base 15 times in 19 plate appearances and he completed the week by reaching base nine consecutive times.
Only two starting pitchers from the first weekend – returning righthander Thatcher Hurd and Alabama righthanded transfer Luke Holman – started in the second go-around.
And again, Holman was superb, and again Hurd struggled mightily.
Holman, who was the Crimson Tide’s Friday night starter last season, threw seven innings of two-hit shutout baseball in Saturday’s win over Northern Illinois. He struck out eight and had no walks.
“Every game, I put everything into it and try not to look ahead,” said Holman, who’s 2-0 and has an ERA of 0.00 with 18 strikeouts, 1 walk and 5 hits allowed. “It’s been very comfortable coming here. The fans are great and I kind of fit that role.”
Hurd, one of LSU’s best pitchers in last season’s NCAA tourney run to win the national championship, gave up 3 runs and 6 innings in 4.1 innings as he started in Friday’s loss to Stony Brook. He has an ERA of 9.00, allowing 11 hits and 7 runs (all earned) in two appearances.
Getting their first starts were junior lefthanded UCLA transfer Gage Jump in the series opener and returning junior lefty Javen Coleman.
Jump, returning from Tommy John surgery that sidelined him for 22 months, struck out 4, walked 1, and gave up 2 hits and 1 run (not earned) in 2.1 innings.
He threw 52 pitches (30 for strikes) after he debuted in LSU’s season-opening win over VMI on Feb. 16 when he closed out the visitors in the ninth inning on 11 pitches.
The Tigers left Monday on their road swing to Houston. They’ll play at Rice on Wednesday, then move to Minute Maid Park for three games in the Astros College Classic in three days. LSU plays No. 14 Texas on Friday at 7 p.m., UL-Lafayette on Saturday at 7 p.m., and Texas State on Sunday at 3 p.m.
“I like getting away for one weekend before conference,” Johnson said, “and I like doing it for an extended period.
“We’ll be gone for six days. That can do a lot for bonding the team. They (his players) tell me they want to play in those (big stadiums) and tell me they want to play in front of sold-out crowds, which we’re going to have on Friday and Saturday.
“We’ll see. Can you control yourself and play to your potential? I don’t know that we’re there yet. But we’re going to learn a lot about our team and about our players’ mental disposition and their poise. And that’s going to do nothing but help us regardless of how the result goes.”
Contact Ron at ronhigginsmedia@gmail.com