(Photo credit: Michael Bacilagupi)
By Hunt Palmer
Had a blast last night at The Box 💥@bearjones_3 | @_lh_13 pic.twitter.com/JPEfP8lx5b
— LSU Baseball (@LSUbaseball) March 31, 2025
One theme rose above the rest over the course of LSU’s three-game sweep of Mississippi State—response.
No matter the circumstance, LSU seemed to always have a response.
The Tigers fell behind 6-2 on Thursday and responded.
The Tigers faced a top tier SEC ace on Friday and responded.
Twice Mother Nature pushed game times late into the night and finishes into the early morning, and LSU responded.
State scored in three innings in game three, LSU always responded. In fact, LSU answered six of nine Mississippi State scoring innings over the weekend.
I’ve watched bad SEC teams. That Mississippi State outfit isn’t terrible. It’s also a group seemingly unable to make the pitch or the swing to turn a game. LSU found that special something all weekend long. Right now, that’s the most important thing.
Win games and identify your shortcomings along the process. Then try to patch them up as best you can.
It’s also not a bad idea to determine what your strengths are and play directly to them when possible.
SET OF STOPPERS
Speaking of strengths Zac Cowan and Casan Evans are weapons.
Last year Griffin Herring played this role. This year LSU has co-stars. Both guys took the ball in the sixth and finished the job this weekend. Cowan faced one over the minimum in his four innings. He struck out seven. Evans pitched himself into some trouble in the sixth and eighth, but he danced out of both issues without giving up a run.
Cowan just hammers the strike zone. He only faced three three-ball counts in 13 hitters, and he got them all out. In the eighth, he struck out the side on 10 pitches.
Evans had to regroup in the eighth after allowing two walks and a single to load the bases in a 2-1 game. He immediately got ahead of Ross Highfill 0-2 and finished him with a slider.
Right now, it’s absolutely fair to ask whether or not one of these two arms should slot into the rotation. My answer is no. At this point, LSU’s clearest path to two wins on a weekend is by using these guys for 30 pitches to finish a game. Once you do that, they are unavailable for the next day. No one else has stepped forward to prove he can nail down a tight win with Cowan and Evans on the bench, so you become a bullpen of one if one of those two goes to the rotation.
Hypothetically, you use Evans as a starter in the game three role. After Cowan goes 59 pitches on Thursday to win, who works the last four innings on Friday to win that game 2-1? I don’t have an answer.
Right now, the roles are properly defined until someone else steps up out of the bullpen.
ROTATION REACTION
Anthony Eyanson was excellent on Friday night. He got through five innings without allowing an earned run. He piled up 10 strikeouts. He walked three and gave up five hits. He’s been compared to Ty Floyd a lot, so I figured I would put numbers to it. Floyd started a weekend game in the first three SEC series like Eyanson has. Here are their statlines side by side.
Eyanson: 13IP, 10R, 8ER, 6BB, 23K
Floyd: 14.2IP, 11R, 11ER, 5BB, 15K
As you can see, they’re comparable. Floyd threw 6.1 innings against Arkansas in the second SEC series. Eyanson hasn’t thrown a pitch in the sixth yet. That’s the next frontier for him. But I do think Friday was a step in the right direction.
The same can be said for Chase Shores. Three of Shores’s four frames were really good. He just had a clunker of a second. In that inning he surrendered a first-pitch homer to Hunter Hines. That’s forgivable up 8-0. The next three hits were all on 0-2 or 1-2 pitches. That’s a lack of execution. He also hit Ross Highfill on a 3-0 pitch in that sequence. It all added up to three more runs scoring on the Dylan Cupp three-run double that came on a hanger of an 0-2 slider. It was just a bad pitch.
Shores would have come out for the fifth had he not taken the comebacker off the eye. That stopped his outing at four innings and 74 pitches. All-in-all, it was a step forward for Shores as well, but there is more room to grow.
As far as Kade Anderson’s start goes, he wasn’t sharp. State really punished his mistakes. Those included a 2-0 pitch right in the happy zone to Ace Reese and a 2-2 slider that hung to Hunter Hines. Those are the best two power hitters in the Mississippi State lineup. You have to execute better against those guys. Both left the yard.
Anderson gutted through 4.1 innings allowing five earned runs over the course of 101 pitches. It could have been worse, but his bullpen bailed him out.
‘PEN PROBLEMS
The wee hours of Sunday morning were an adventure for the bullpen. Conner Ware, Mavrick Rizy, D.J. Primeaux, Connor Benge and Cooper Williams faced a combined 19 hitters. Fifteen of the 19 hitters faced 2-0 or 3-1 counts or were hit by a pitch prior to getting there.
That group threw 31 strikes and 45 balls protecting a massive lead. Primeaux and Williams failed to throw a single strike.
That’s just not good enough. To their credit, an inning never went completely off the rails. State scored three in the seventh, but that was the biggest blow. It was absorbed by an LSU offense that scored 17 runs on 19 hits.
LSU has an elite offense, a quality ace, excellent defense and two stoppers out of the bullpen. That’s a fantastic base to a team. The next big step is going to come from two of those guys (and/or William Schmidt who was not used this weekend) finding the strike zone more often.
LSU becomes a true threat to be great if that happens. There is plenty of time for maturation by the entire group. None of those guys have been in this type of role before. The next six weeks will be about finding two or three that can really emerger as dependable threats.
Once that happens, Cowan and Evans won’t have to be counted on for 50 pitches per outing and may be usable in multiple weekend games.
HITTING HIGHLIGHTS
Pico Kohn and Stone Simmons really handcuffed LSU in game two of the series. Those two guys are really good, and credit Eyanson and Evans for making the two solo homers stand up for a win. In the other two games, LSU’s offense raked. The Tigers scored 25 runs on 27 hits in games one and three.
The highlights, for me, were Daniel Dickinson and Luis Hernandez.
Both guys have come from lower level baseball and excelled in the SEC. Dickinson was 3-for-5 with three driven in in game three. He clubbed a huge three-run homer on Thursday by getting out in front of a 3-2 fastball at the top of the strike zone.
All of Dickinson’s pre-conference numbers have translated to league play, and that makes LSU a significantly better offense.
Hernandez is only hitting .280 overall, but it’s the slugging that has been huge for LSU. He hit two home runs over the weekend including one off Kohn. The .359 batting average and 23 home runs from Indiana State were never going to fully translate to LSU considering the step up in competition and significantly larger defensive workload at catcher. But Hernandez is making those swings count by leaving the yard. That’s a huge shot of life for the Tiger offense.
