By RON HIGGINS, Journal Sports
BATON ROUGE — There are no easy weekends in SEC baseball.
Not in a league that has had six different teams win the national titles in the last 14 College World Series, including five different national championship winners in the last six CWS.
There can be the bliss of winning a series with total team effort, followed by losing a series with a complete squad abomination the next week.
Defending national champion LSU, ranked No. 2 nationally last week and winners of its first 16 of 18 non-conference games, fell in the latter category after barely avoiding getting swept at Mississippi State on the opening weekend of SEC play.
The Tigers, now 17-4 overall and 1-2 in the SEC, dropped to No. 4 nationally by USA Today and No. 5 by Baseball America and D1 Baseball, after losing Games 1 (10-4) and 3 (15-5) to the Bulldogs and barely holding in Game 2 (9-8) after almost blowing a 9-1 lead.
LSU third-year Jay Johnson’s post-series autopsy revealed the obvious.
“I do not think we pitched well,” said Johnson on Monday heading into tonight’s 6:30 p.m. home game vs. Louisiana Tech (16-5) in Alex Box Stadium. “I don’t think we played great on defense. Offensively, there were a few bright spots.
“Averaging 6 runs a game is not enough to sweep, but it’s enough to win two of the three if the other elements are in order.”
But they weren’t, especially the Tigers’ pitching which had been pristine in the first month of the season.
Before being hammered by Mississippi State for 33 runs and 41 hits, LSU had a team earned run average of 2.81. The Tigers’ starting pitching rotation of Luke Holman, Gage Jump and Thatcher Hurd had a combined 7-1 record with a 1.99 ERA and an 87 to 13 strikeout-to-walk ratio.
That trio and nine LSU relievers got obliterated by State’s hitters, who batted .362. The Bulldogs scored almost 70 percent of their runs (23 of 33) with two outs. LSU’s pitching staff ERA in the MSU series was 10.58 including a combined 8.78 from Holman, Jump and Hurd.
“We need to go back to the drawing board a little bit and make sure we’re pulling the best out of each guy in terms of how we train them, how we prepare them, how we pitch call for them, all of those things to maximize their talent,” Johnson said. “We’re deep diving in a lot of that right now.
“I have good faith that it will be better, that these guys will be able to respond. There’s a few guys we need to push up the chart a little bit because they have more talent than where they’re at right now. It’s our job to help them get that out of them.
“The pitching roster for the weekends is very fluid right now and that’s not a bad thing. That’s a good thing.”
The Tigers batted just .250 in the MSU series. They were deficient in every key area of hitting, batting .125 (3 of 24) with runners in scoring position, .206 (6 of 29) with two outs and 0.77 (2 of 26) vs. left-handed pitching.
The bright spot was junior third baseman Tommy White, who finally looked like the nation’s RBI leader from a year ago.
Not only was he fabulous at the plate vs. the Bulldogs hitting 385 (5-for-13) with three homers, seven RBI, four runs and a .500 on-base percentage, he also put on a fielding clinic with eight assists, two putouts and a 1.000 fielding percentage.
“He came to LSU because I said `You’re playing third base, and we’re gonna make it better’,” Johnson said of White. “He took a lot of pride in it (fielding).
“When you have talent, determination and a specific plan to do something, you can get better at it. All those things combined made him a better defensive third baseman and he played exceptionally this (past) weekend.”
Because the Tigers have had so many games lately – nine in 12 days through Sunday – they haven’t had much time to practice.
It’s why Johnson said his team will practice at 1:30 this afternoon five hours before the first pitch vs. Louisiana Tech.
“One message for me right now to them (Johnson’s team) is it’s never really as good as it seems,” Johnson said, “and it’s not as bad as it seems.
“We need to look at improvement in every phase of how we play. That’s all we can do and it’s certainly not getting any easier. That’s not a surprise to anybody.”
LSU hosts No. 8 Florida for a three-game series Friday. The Tigers beat the Gators 3 games to 2 in last season’s CWS finals, revenging Florida’s 2-0 sweep of LSU in the 2017 CWS finals.
After that, the Tigers’ next three series are at No. 1 Arkansas, home vs. No. 3 Vanderbilt and at No. 7 Tennessee, whom LSU eliminated in last season’s CWS with two victories over the Vols.
Contact Ron at ronhigginsmedia@gmail.com