PALMER: Tiger pitching made statement Saturday night

By Hunt Palmer

OMAHA, Neb. — All season long, we ask questions.

When the program has made 20 trips to Omaha in 40 years and has seven championship flags flying outside Alex Box Stadium, it’s natural to talk about June in February.

LSU’s seasons have been defined in June for decades.

The program lost its top two starters from 2024. Luke Holman (71st) and Gage Jump (73rd) were both second round picks and signed for just under $3 million last summer.

Griffin Herring handling almost all of the heavy lifting out of the bullpen in 2024. He moved on for about $800,000, as well.

Filling those six shoes was question No. 1 for this iteration of LSU baseball, and Saturday displayed just how well that job was done.

Kade Anderson proved why he’s the best ace in the country.

As a freshman, he allowed 10 earned runs in 3.1 SEC innings last season. Saturday night he stared down college baseball’s toughest lineup and carved it up for seven dominant innings.

Aside from the solo home run Reese Robinett clubbed, Arkansas never got a runner to third base.

Anderson’s effort was hardly a surprise. He’s been brilliant all season.

LSU’s bullpen has wobbled. Anderson and Anthony Eyanson have been the standard in college baseball atop the rotation. Zac Cowan and Casan Evans slammed winning doors time and time again.

The question asked so frequently was, who else can LSU count on out of the bullpen?

Chase Shores provided a resounding answer on Saturday.

This time last year, Shores was a likely candidate for the ace role. That didn’t work out. Neither did his stint as LSU’s third starter. Undeterred, Shores kept working.

His outing in the SEC Tournament against Ole Miss flashed the potential. On that Hoover afternoon he worked 2.2 hitless innings featuring that sizzling fastball and harsh slider.

Eight days later, the shaky version of Shores emerged in the Baton Rouge Regional. He walked three in an inning. That back-to-back effort summarized this Tiger bullpen fittingly—talented but inconsistent.

Shores showed his dominant side last weekend closing out the super regional. Did that mean the next outing was destined for trouble or he had found a groove?

Another question.

Shores hurled his first delivery of the eighth to the backstop. The gasp from Louisiana living rooms was audible in east Nebraska. My head hit my hands in the radio booth.

After that, Shores threw seven of his next nine pitches for strikes and struck out a pair in a perfect inning of work to protect a 4-1 lead. In the biggest spot of the season, the tall Texan delivered.

So did the rookie from the Lone Star State. Casan Evans was called upon to finish the job in the ninth and finish it he did.

Evans started all four hitters he faced with strikes and fanned the SEC Player of the Year with the tying run in the on deck circle. That’s where it stayed the entire inning as Evans worked around a leadoff single to get three straight Hogs.

As long as Jay Johnson is the head coach at LSU, the Tigers are going to have a loaded roster. Every loaded roster hemorrhages talent to the MLB Draft in July. That means the next crop has to emerge.

Anderson and Eyanson have outperformed Holman and Jump, and the amount of options LSU has behind those two trumps Herring’s bullpen crew from a season ago. It’s just a matter of consistency with this group, and Saturday night Shores and Evans answered the proverbial bell.

With the wind howling in, Charles Schwab Field plays huge. Runs are difficult to come by. That had nothing to do with how well LSU threw the ball Saturday night. Choose your launching pad. Put that game in Lindsey Nelson Stadium in Knoxville, Foley Field in Athens or Wrigley Field on a breezy day, and the Hogs still don’t scratch two runs on LSU.

Arkansas hit five balls hard in nine innings—Robinette’s home run, Wehiwa Aloy‘s leadoff single in the fourth, Cam Kozeal‘s leadoff single in the eighth, Justin Thomas Jr.‘s lineout in the eighth and Charles Davalan‘s leadoff single in the ninth.

That’s it. Wind or not, a homer, three singles and a line out isn’t going to create offense.

The first win in Omaha is paramount. LSU now needs to win two or three games in four days instead of a game every day.

The Tigers are the betting favorite to win an eighth national title. That part is a long week away.

With Eyanson lined up for Monday and two of LSU’s top relievers comfortable on the Charles Schwab Field, LSU’s situation is ideal.

No question about that.