By Hunt Palmer
Baseball season is rapidly approaching. Jay Johnson’s 2025 team is ranked in the top five no matter where you look. The incoming portal class was ranked No. 1 by multiple outlets, and the freshman class earned that honor as well.
The force that was a 1-2 punch at the top of the rotation is gone, and so is the thunderous bat of Tommy White. But some familiar faces return as well, and, as usual, the anticipation around the program is ratcheted up this time of year.
Let’s continue a look around the roster for this 2025 LSU baseball team with centerfield.
WHO’S GONE: Paxton Kling (Transfer: Penn State)
WHO’S BACK: Jake Brown
WHO’S NEW: Chris Stanfield (Transfer: Auburn)
Paxton Kling led off the 2023 season opener for LSU. He was the starter in centerfield for the eventual national champions. The offense just never came around. Over 118 career games which included 61 starts, Kling hit just .250 with five homers and 70 strikeouts. That included a .179 SEC batting average over two years.
Kling led the team in centerfield starts last year. Mac Bingham was second. Jake Brown started the last four games of the regional, though. Brown’s freshman season was uneven. He was just 3-for-21 in SEC games and finished the year with a .264 batting average and .370 on base percentage. He hit four homers and collected four doubles.
He’s a fantastic athlete who is learning to focus on offense and defense as opposed to pitching which he’d done his whole baseball life.
Brown took strides offensively in the fall, and he’s looking to pay those off in the spring. He’ll have to if he wants to play center, because Chris Stanfield is really surging.
Stanfield was Auburn’s primary centerfielder last season. He made 51 starts and led the Tigers in multi-hit games. In SEC play, Stanfield hit .283 with 17 runs scored. His success against LSU may have precipitated this move. Back in 2023, as a true freshman, Stanfield got two hits off Paul Skenes. He followed that up in 2024 with a three-hit game at The Box. Now he’ll call that stadium home.
The Tallahassee, Fla., native has stolen nine bases in each of his first two college seasons. He plays very good defense. There’s not much thunder in the bat, but LSU didn’t bring him over to hit homers.
HUNT’S TAKE: Stanfield has probably won this job, but Derek Curiel and Brown are very much in the mix to start games in centerfield. Jay Johnson is betting that he’ll develop Stanfield from an average SEC player to a very productive one like he did with Michael Braswell last season when he came over from South Carolina.
Brown and Stanfield both have some development to undergo. Neither was a finished product last season.
LSU should get solid defense at the position. Brown’s misplay in the Chapel Hill outfield last year is fresh on everyone’s mind, but that was his only error of the season. He’ll grow from it.
The question remains, will this be a platoon situation? Brown and Curiel hit left-handed. Stanfield swings it from the right side.
Power production is unlikely from any of those sources, but LSU would like some combination of those three to hit .310 with five to seven home runs and high-level defense. That’s a reasonable bar to clear.
Right now, I like Curiel in left with Stanfield in center. That’s how I think it starts. That means there is a ton of competition in right field between Brown, Ashton Larson, Josh Pearson, Ethan Fry, Dalton Beck, etc.
You’ll see some different outfield groupings throughout the first few weeks. The players that perform will stick. The ones who struggle will have a hard time finding at bats.
NEXT UP: Right Field
