LSU Athletics
By Hunt Palmer
In the preseason, Jay Johnson called it a goal to win every midweek game in a season.
Last year’s team went 13-1 with an ugly 13-3 loss to Northwestern State in a game was that delayed for lightening and featured three Tiger errors. Aside from that one, though, it was a clean year of midweek action.
With two weekends down and eight games in 10 days behind the Tigers, the normal cadence of a season is close. There’s still a four-game weekend to play this coming weekend followed by a Wednesday road trip to Louisiana-Lafayette.
But this week starts with a visit from a McNeese State club that is scuffling early on. The Cowboys are 2-5 and really struggled to get the bats going in a sweep at the hands of Kansas over the weekend in Lake Charles. McNeese scored a total of five runs in three games with just three extra base hits.
McNeese bashed 48 hits in their first four games of the year, a three-game set with Sam Houston and a midweek win over Louisiana Tech. Kansas doused those flames in a big way, and the Tiger staff will try to do the same.
BUMPY BEGINNINGS
Jaden Noot and Zac Cowan currently sport matching 9.00 ERAs. Those two veteran right-handers are better than that.
Cowan has just been hit hard. In two innings over two appearances, he’s given up seven hits including a double and a homer. He’s not walking guys, just one. But the ball is being left up, and his stuff isn’t good enough to do that. There’s a two-year track record for Cowan here, so he gets the benefit of the early doubt. However, with the depth of this staff, he needs to throw the ball much better if he wants weekend innings.
Noot started the Kent State game last week and gave up three runs on three hits and three walks in three innings. At this point, it’s safe to suggest that Kent State is pretty good. The Golden Flashes dominated Southeastern Louisiana on Opening Weekend, played LSU tough on that Monday and then went to Knoxville and took 2-of-3 from the Vols with the only Tennessee win coming with a walkoff homer in the ninth. It was nearly a sweep.
Neither Noot nor Cowan pitched over the weekend, so expect to see both on Tuesday night. They’ll need to elevate their games.
PLAYING CATCH
LSU’s defense has taken a step back early on. That’s no surprise. Daniel Dickinson and Michael Braswell were always going to be tough to replace.
Tanner Reaves was up for that assignment because Jay Johnson values his bat. Because of that, Reaves got a chance to go play left field when Chris Stanfield went down.
However, Reaves made an error in left field in back-to-back games. That sent Brayden Simpson out to left to finish the weekend.
Seth Dardar plays hard at second base, but it’s not a work of art. These midweek contests are generally lower stress environments that should allow for some quality defensive plays and decisions.
Those are important to LSU right now.
PLATE PATIENCE
It doesn’t sound like a lot of fun, but LSU needs to take pitches Tuesday night.
Thankfully, that’s a strength of this group.
McNeese pitching has been very generous with the base on balls early on. The Cowboys walked 11 in a game against Sam Houston and 10 in game one against Kansas.
For the season, the Pokes have walked 54 in seven games. The eight per contest. If a staff is going to basically issue a walk per inning, take it.
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