LSU Baseball
By Hunt Palmer
Jay Johnson doesn’t waste much time.
When weather kept the Tigers in Nashville overnight and into Monday, he worked. The LSU pitching staff had just walked 25 Vanderbilt hitters in three days, so it was easy to determine where the work needed to be focused.
“It’s stepping up our game,” Johnson said. “This is when the players need us the most. I’m not a pitching guru. I know what winning pitching is, though, at this level. And I know where I believe some of our shortcomings are.”
Clearly command is atop that list. LSU cleaned that up in a big way on Tuesday night, walking just three Grambling hitters. Only one of those came in the last six innings.
“Everybody knows you can’t walk people,” Johnson said. “Everybody knows you’ve got to throw two of the first three (pitches for strikes). But, how do you do that and execute those things? And there’s a different answer. Some guys, it’s change their sights. Some guys it’s change mechanically each pitch. Sometimes it’s just a mental reset. I thought when we missed, we got back in the zone tonight.”
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Only nine of the 37 Grambling batters faced a three-ball count. Reagan Ricken threw a wild pitch on the games fourth offering, but that was the last one of the night for LSU.
It was a chilly Tuesday night in front of the smallest crowd of the season against a 5-13 team, but strikes are strikes. Without improvement there, LSU can’t expect to climb out of this funk.
Johnson fully expects that improvement.
“They’re good,” Johnson said of his staff. “We have a good, talented pitching staff that has not pitched good. So, it’s just like digging through all of these layers. How to use guys, how to call pitches with guys, just literally unpacking all of it to help them because they need some help right now.”
Rizyyy
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On a Tuesday, the starting rotation can’t realistically get in-game work. While the bullpen took a small step forward against Grambling, the starters will have to wait for the series against Oklahoma beginning Thursday to get back on the bump.
Casan Evans, Cooper Moore and William Schmidt combined to walk 10 in 11 innings of work over the weekend. They threw 59 percent of their pitches for strikes which isn’t quite high enough. That was a change from Moore and Schmidt’s season to this point, and Evans was following up an excellent start against Sacramento State.
Johnson didn’t neglect his starting staff in the Monday discussions. The whole staff was under the microscope.
“It’s just tightening up some preparation things or taking them to another level in terms of what we’re doing bullpen-wise with the starters, making sure that’s as tight as it possibly can be,” Johnson said. “If there’s a pitch execution for a reliever, their catch play has to matter. It has to mirror what the improvement has to be. You only have so many throws as a pitcher. Hitters can swing all day. Pitchers can’t throw all day, so the quality of those has to be lined up. And there’s nobody better than Coach Yeskie at that type of stuff. So, I feel good about that.”
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