Around the Horn: Tigers take crucial series with Arkansas

(Photo Credit: @LSUbaseball on X)

By Hunt Palmer

LSU is hard to beat at The Box.

Based on the results of the weekend and season as a whole, somebody is likely going to have to do that twice to keep LSU out of Omaha.

Arkansas is as good as anyone in college baseball.

The Hogs lead the SEC in batting average, hits, on base percentage and runs. Their pitching has allowed the second fewest runs in the league and has the best WHIP in the conference. As LSU has done with every visitor to Baton Rouge this year, the Tigers won the weekend.

Sure, a win Sunday would have done wonders for the metrics and LSU postseason positioning, but two of three against that club was realistically as good as Jay Johnson and his team could have hoped for.

LSU played great baseball in all three phases of the game and appears to be finding itself as little bit as the postseason now rapidly approaches.

TOP TWO

LSU may have the best one-two rotation punch in college baseball.

We saw how talented Tennessee’s top two are three weeks ago, but Marcus Phillips hasn’t shown nearly the consistency that Kade Anderson and Anthony Eyanson have.

Vanderbilt has a nice combination of J.D. Thompson and Connor Fennell, but LSU’s duo is far more draftable.

Texas’s ace is lost for the year, and Eyanson has 31 more punchouts than Florida State No. 2 Joey Volini.

Anderson and Eyanson are second and third respectively in the SEC in strikeouts. They racked up a combined 21 in 11.2 innings over the weekend while walking just two and yielding just three runs, all Anderson’s.

Eyanson is just in the zone at this point, literally and figuratively. In his last four SEC starts, he’s worked 26.2 innings, allowed 20 hits, four earned runs, with 11 walks and 45 strikeouts.

Twenty-five of those strikeouts have come in the last two weeks where he’s allowed just one run and two walks in 17 innings.

Against Texas A&M and Arkansas.

Anderson’s departure on Friday night was terrifying in the moment. All reports are that he’s just fine and was experiencing some wrist cramping.

With Anderson and Eyanson taking the ball for LSU, the Tigers are going to be a seriously tough out.

GROUNDED HOGS

One statistic I was monitoring carefully over the weekend was the longball. Arkansas lives by it, and Anderson and some other Tigers have died by it.

It was a non-factor. The Hogs hit just two homers on the entire weekend, both in game one. That’s a masterful job by LSU pitching to keep the ball in the yard and make Arkansas earn everything by clumping hits together.

Arkansas only mounted three multi-run innings in three games. One was the inconsequential seventh on Saturday when LSU led 12-0.

Wehiwa Aloy alone was just 2-for-12 with eight strikeouts in the series. He might win SEC Player of the Year.

EVANS ISSUES

In consecutive starts, Casan Evans hasn’t been great. He torched Tennessee in his starting debut for six strong innings. Since, he struggled with command at Texas A&M and got knocked around by Arkansas.

The outings were very, very different.

Evans couldn’t throw the ball over the plate enough in College Station. He only gave up three hits and a run at A&M, but his pitch count skyrocketed because he was falling behind constantly.

On Sunday, Evans was leaving fastballs right over the heart of the plate, and Arkansas was smoking them.

I still believe LSU’s strategy of having Evans available for the first two game out of the bullpen and using him as a starter is unused is a sound one. His six-inning effort against Tennessee proves he can do it.

He’s just got to be sharper than he has been the last two weeks.

SURGING SHORES?

Over the last two weeks, Chase Shores has thrown the ball well.

He’s worked three outings against Texas A&M and Arkansas with this combined linescore:

6.2IP, 5H, 3ER, 1BB, 6K.

He had thrown a significant amount more fastballs prior to Sunday, but he used the slider effectively in the finale against Arkansas.

LSU is going to have to get something out of Shores in the postseason. There are too many outs to navigate to stick it all on the “top four” guys. Shores allowed 19 earned runs in his first 22.2 innings of SEC work. That’s tough on confidence. Hopefully the tall Texan is finding a little something late in the season.

BATS BACK?

Enough about the pitching. On to offense.

LSU really played a good series offensively. Zach Root was tough on Friday, but LSU pushed a pair across thanks to Jared Jones’s bloop RBI single and Ethan Frey’s laser of an opposite field homer.

Arkansas went to their “A” relievers when Root exited, and LSU beat them. Aiden Jiminez had allowed six earned runs all season before LSU scored a pair on him to knot the score in the seventh.

Derek Curiel was just one for his last 15 before he laced the two-run single that tied the game.

Jones drilled a Gabe Gaeckle fastball to lead off the 10^th, and Frey did enough to get the ball to the outfield to win it. The forgotten at bat will be Daniel Dickinson’s clutch two-strike ground out to first that moved Jones over to third with just one out. Gaeckle is really tough to hit, and Dickinson could have easily been a strikeout victim when the count went 2-2.

Then Saturday LSU just exploded on offense. The Tigers scored in six of seven innings, hit four homers and had four players amass multiple hits.

What that did was make things tougher on Sunday because Arkansas was able to save its best bullpen pieces in a blowiut. Still, LSU got 10 hits and drew five free bases on Sunday against really tough bullpen arms.

Four runs is not much to write home about, but the day as a whole was not bad.

Over three games against a talented pitching staff, LSU scored 22 runs on 30 hits. The leadoff man reached in 12 of 26 tries, almost half the innings. And LSU hit seven home runs.

I don’t have a good reason why LSU plays much better offensively at home, but sure looks that way.

LOCKED IN?

I will have a full Resume’ Review piece out later this week, but LSU has not locked in a top eight seed yet. The log jam in the SEC didn’t really break up over the weekend. Tennessee is in some trouble, but Texas, Georgia, Auburn, Vanderbilt and Arkansas are still in very good shape with LSU.

If LSU messes around next weekend against a 5-22 team, a top eight can absolutely slip away.

If the Tigers play in Columbia the way they played over the weekend against Arkansas, LSU will be at The Box until Omaha.