LSU Baseball
By Hunt Palmer
The margins are razor thin in SEC play.
LSU felt fortunate to grab rubber matches against Kentucky and Tennessee after falling well behind. It looked like the Tigers were destined to pull off a hat trick, coming back from another massive Sunday deficit. It wasn’t meant to be as Ole Miss scored in the bottom of the seventh to retake the lead and finish off the sweep in Oxford.
Mother Nature didn’t allow Texas and Texas A&M to finish their three-game series on Sunday. The Aggies won the first two, meaning 13 of the 16 teams in the league have played a winless weekend. LSU met that fate at Ole Miss.
PITCHING PROBLEMS
Entering the weekend, Ole Miss’s offense was the worst in the SEC. In league games, the Rebels had the fewest hits in the conference and were 15th among 16 teams in batting average. They had the third most strikeouts and third fewest runs scored.
A team with a .256 batting average hit .348 against LSU. Their high-water mark in four SEC series was 15 runs scored, and they averaged 11.3 runs per series. LSU pitching allowed 26 runs over three games.
Every level of the staff is responsible.
Casan Evans and William Schmidt are solid SEC arms. They’ve not shown themselves to be a championship-level 1-2 punch. The Tigers are 2-3 in Evans’s SEC starts and 1-4 behind Schmidt. That’s a 3-7 record.
Evans’s SEC ERA is 4.60. Schmidt’s is 3.97. They’ve combined to complete six innings in three of 10 league outings and have walked 30 batters in 51 innings. A walk more than every other inning is just not going to cut it in SEC games.
Schmidt looked great for three innings before unraveling in the fourth. Evans allowed five of the first six Rebels to reach base and then gave up a long ball in the second. He did settle in after that, but Fridays are unforgiving. LSU only managed three runs.
That’s just the tip of the spear. The rest of the group is pitching worse.
SEC opponents are averaging 6.7 runs per game against LSU. The Tiger staff has held teams to three or fewer runs just twice in 15 games. Conversely, LSU has given up eight-plus runs in six of 15, nearly half. That only happened four times in 30 tries a season ago.
The Cooper Moore loss has been significant. LSU’s offense overcame it in back-to-back weekends but couldn’t on Sunday.
Gavin Guidry and Grant Fontenot have started the three games in Moore’s stead, and it hasn’t been pretty. They’ve combined for 4.1 IP, 8 H, 11 R, 7 BB, 5 K. Moore was reliable for 12 to 15 outs of solid work. His replacements struggle to get out of the first and second innings.
That massively concerning moving forward.
Despite Ole Miss only coming to bat six times on Saturday, LSU pitching threw 50 more balls than the Rebels, 77-27. For reference, in his final outing as a Tiger, Kade Anderson threw 44 balls in a nine-inning complete game against Coastal Carolina. LSU topped that number by 33 in six innings on Saturday.
MORE MISTAKES
Friday night was a comedy of errors by LSU.
Ethan Clauss failed to step on second base when receiving a threw from Steven Milam. He also overran a safety squeeze bunt. Seth Dardar threw wide of first base on a ground ball to his backhand side. Chris Stanfield caught a 200 foot fly ball and threw 20 feet wide of home plate as Will Furniss lumbered home.
All of that happened in one inning, the Rebels’ three-run eighth that won it.
Dardar also failed to get a crucial bunt down in the fourth with runners at first and third. He struck out. Cade Arrambide got picked off on a simple first and third steal when the catcher pump faked to second. That’s a Little League play. Mason Braun was picked off at first. Getting picked off when not stealing is just unacceptable.
Again, this is one game we’re talking about, and it wasn’t even the game LSU got 10-runned in.
HALFWAY HOME
We’ve reached the midway point, and LSU sits at 6-9. The Tigers have to post a 7-8 record in the second half to feel comfortable getting into the field of 64. While manageable, it doesn’t feel likely to me.
This group is porous on defense, questionable in the rotation and has not hit top-end SEC pitching. It’s admirable that the Tigers can bash back into games on Sunday against the end of staffs. That shows toughness and some ability. However, failing to muster anything against LJ Mercurius, Jaxon Jelkin, Landon Mack, Tegan Kuhns, Cam Appenzeller, Hunter Elliott or Cade Townsend is a red flag.
Against those eight arms, LSU has not scored more than two runs. None of the eight has walked more than two Tigers. The strikeout-to-walk ratio is 52-to-9, and LSU has lost all seven games.
There just isn’t a discernible strength to lean on moving forward.
The remaining teams on the schedule have some flaws. Texas A&M doesn’t pitch well. Mississippi State has lost six straight league games, all at home. South Carolina may be the worst team in the league. That’s the next nine.
In the same breath, A&M is second in the SEC standings and just took a pair from Texas, and State has swept Vanderbilt and Ole Miss. Those two went 5-1 against LSU.
Putting all the eggs in the South Carolina basket is dangerous. The Gamecocks just swept Missouri and are 5-6 in the SEC since letting Paul Mainieri go.
For me, this LSU team feels too flawed to predict some sort of SEC turnaround. There are some talented hitters in the lineup, and Evans and Schmidt are capable. Zac Cowan and Deven Sheerin have been good.
I prematurely hit the panic button on the bullpen in 2023 and on the team at 3-12 in 2024. I promised not to do that moving forward, but this feels awfully bleak.
One thing is certain; this group keeps fighting.
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