LSU Baseball
By Hunt Palmer
Perhaps no program in the country has worked the transfer portal like LSU baseball.
What produced Paul Skenes and Tommy White for a title did the same with Anthony Eyanson and Daniel Dickinson. That’s not to mention names like Thatcher Hurd, Gage Jump, Luke Holman, Luis Hernandez and Michael Braswell who made huge contributions.
Those stories tell themselves with any LSU baseball fan.
Jay Johnson dipped back into the portal to fill in the 2026 pieces around Jake Brown, Derek Curiel, Steven Milam and Casan Evans.
Brown has enjoyed a stellar start to his junior season, and Curiel has been solid. Milam and Evans have been up and down. The transfers have been largely down for a month.
Seth Dardar homered twice on opening weekend against Milwaukee. He’s 4-for-33 (.121) over his last 13 games without a home run. Dardar hit .313 in Big 12 games last year with eight homes and 25 games at Kansas State.
Trent Caraway showed immense power at the end of last season at Oregon State. He’s hitting .232 to this point with a pair of home runs. He’s 0 for his last 14 and has an on base percentage of .302 which is 90 points behind LSU’s closest regular starter in Cade Arrambide.
Zach Yorke hit four home runs in LSU’s first nine games. He doesn’t have one in his last 35 at bats and is 8-for-40 (.200) over his last 12 games.
Those three can play better. They have eight college baseball seasons under their belts and have proven that. No, those seasons weren’t against the SEC, but neither were the games before this weekend. The lights in Baton Rouge are bright, and slumps can swell due to pressure. When everyone is slumping at once, that swelling takes over.
Arrambide displayed a power surge early in the season clubbing three homers in LSU’s first eight games. After leading the team in hitting during the fall, it looked like he was primed to explode. He’s got one homer since, is 6-for-32 (.188) and has struck out nine times in LSU’s last six games.
The new pieces aren’t performing.
In January, there was reason to believe they would. They still can in March, April, May and June. Right now, they’re not.
This is not to excuse Evans walking a boatload on Friday, Gavin Guidry blowing a save, Tanner Reaves hitting .222 or Zac Cowan‘s early issues. The team, as a whole, is struggling mightily. However, new pieces have been such a positive for LSU going back to Eric Reyzelman, Paul Gervase and Jacob Berry.
This crop has not arrived with that type of impact.
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