It rare for LSU to return its entire starting rotation.
Weekend starters at LSU are often draft eligible and make the jump to professional baseball. Under Jay Johnson, the program has done a wonderful job of cycling through to the next set of weekend arms whether that come from internal development like Kade Anderson and Ty Floyd or the transfer portal like Paul Skenes, Luke Holman, Gage Jump ad Anthony Eyanson.
The 2026 group never found a rhythm. After six weeks of solid baseball, Cooper Moore was sidelined for the remainder of the season when a weightroom accident forced surgery on his right arm. Casan Evans and William Schmidt pitched okay, but neither ascended to the level of a dominant SEC starter.
All three are back for 2027. But LSU is still adding.
WHAT WE KNOW
Landon Hood just finished a stellar freshman season at Gonzaga. The Arizona native posted the lowest opponent batting average at the school since 2019 and the second lowest all time, .162.
He’s a 6-foot-3, 200-pound right hander whose fastball was regularly clocked at 94-95 and touched 97 mph at times. Gonzaga largely deployed him out of the bullpen where he made 12 of his 16 appearances.
They weren’t short stints, though. He averaged 3.1 innings per appearance and went multiple innings in all but two. Four times he fired five-plus innings and got his pitch count over 80 on six occasions. Essentially, he was stretched out.
Hood’s best statistical outing was his three-inning carving of the Oklahoma Sooners in Norman. He didn’t allow a run or a hit and struck out seven (one with the help of a pitch clock violation).
The strikeout-to-walk ratio is strong at 78-to-21, and he didn’t hit a single batter in his final 25.1 innings of work. He only allowed nine extra base hits on the season.
Hood is not a draft-eligible sophomore, so he will have at least two seasons to play in Baton Rouge.
THE FIT
As far as talent goes, Hood is a great fit. He’s got the profile of a weekend starter and has already proven he can handle the role that Griffin Herring played in 2024 and Zac Cowan and Evans played in 2025 as a high-leverage, multi-inning closer.
The only small concern, and it is very small, is that his profile is very similar to Evans and Moore. All three are about 6-foot-3 right handers with a fastball between 93-97 mph and a plus changeup. Add Schmidt, another 6-foot-3 right hander with a mid-90s fastball, and the diversity of your starting options isn’t great. But there is not a talent shortage.
Hood is a legitimate draft prospect for 2028, and that’s because his stuff is exceptional. Skenes, Jump, Eyanson and Schmidt have all season their velocity jump a couple of miles per hour at LSU with the use of the strength program and the pitch lab. If Hood gets that and consistently pitches at 96-97 instead of 94-95, you’ve really got a plus fastball. And it’s already good. According to Kendall Rogers of D1Baseball, Hood got a 53 percent whiff rate on the fastball this season. The fastball whiff rate is among the best indicators of effectiveness. When hitters miss the fastball, they’re either not looking for it or it has explosive traits, or both. Hood has both working in his favor because of the fastball carry and the elite changeup that makes the fastball play up. If he gets it to 97 consistently, it’s going to be lethal.
The curveball has a really good shape to it, sharp and with plenty of depth. It’s his third pitch, but it’s a good one which adds to the starter profile.
HUNT’S PROJECTION
I think Hood is going to start on the weekend.
My contention has been for a month that LSU running the starting rotation back would be unsettling. It simply didn’t work in 2026, so to suggest it would transform into a championship-caliber group in 2027 would be ambitious at best and foolish at worst.
Evans, Schmidt and Moore are very talented arms and will certainly have a big impact on the team. Moving one of the three back to the bullpen sounds tempting especially considering how well Evans handled that role as a freshman. Now, all three are in draft years, so that conversation becomes tougher when you start taking professional money off the table.
That wouldn’t be the case with Hood who could theoretically become the three-inning closer in 2027 like he was at Gonzaga. I just think he’s worth closer to 20 outs on a weekend instead of eight or nine.
Either way, this is a huge addition based on stuff, strike throwing and years in the LSU program. The pitching staff imploded this spring. New blood was a necessity, and LSU is off to a good start there.
