By Hunt Palmer
LSU’s offense has a reputation.
Jay Johnson has built college baseball’s premier program into an offensive force rooted in the foundation of pitch selection and discipline. Friday and Saturday’s opposing head coaches certainly noticed.
“There’s nothing left for college baseball to offer us than what we’ve already seen,” said Indiana head coach Jeff Mercer. “We’ve played five games. There’s nothing left for them to offer us. We played one of, if not the best, pitching staffs last week. We played one of the best, if not the best, offenses in the country today. So, there’s nothing left for us to face.”
Through two games in Jacksonville, LSU has scored 23 runs on 30 hits. They Tigers have drawn 19 walks and been hit by two pitches. They haven’t been retired in order yet.
“They don’t swing,” said Notre Dame head coach Shawn Stiffler. “They understand the value of not swinging. They have a really, really great knack for understanding what pitches they want to handle and how to handle them and what to do. And they’ve got mature hitters who can hit the ball deep (in the strike zone).”
That ability to let the ball travel is crucial to handling upper-level pitching. LSU wore out the opposite field for RBI hits. Trent Caraway sprayed a double to the right field. Omar Serna lined an RBI single to right. Cade Arrambide homered to dead center.
“They were crushing us on backside base hits and backside doubles there off Crowell,” Stiffler said. “They did a great job with him. When you have the ability to have enough hand speed to see the ball deep like they do and really understand the zone, it’s funny, right, by doing nothing, they create so much pressure. By just standing there and not swinging they put so much pressure on you. That’s the style they play. They buy into it. They do a great job with it.”
LSU is averaging 12 runs per game through seven contests. They’ve scored double digits in five of seven games.
It’s one thing for Johnson to praise his team or for the local media to laud the Tigers. When a head coach watches it for four hours and has these things to say, it speaks more loudly.
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