Station Survey: What surprised you most about this baseball season?

March 29, 2026: LSU 2nd baseman Seth Sardar turns a double play during NCAA Baseball action between the Kentucky Wildcats and the LSU Tigers at the Alex Box Stadium in Baton Rouge, LA. Michael Bacigalupi

By Hunt Palmer

I don’t think anyone saw this coming.

LSU played great baseball against bad teams for two weeks and then crated en route to a disaster of a 9-21 SEC finish. We asked the 1o4.5 ESPN team was surprised them most about the 2016 Tigers.

Jacob Hester, Co-Host, Off the Bench: I think the most surprising thing was that this team never consistently became what we all thought it would become. The talent was there. The experience was there. On paper, it checked every box you want going into a season with Omaha expectations. But baseball’s not played on paper.

What surprised me most was the inconsistency. One weekend you’d see flashes of a team that looked capable of winning a big SEC series, and the next you’d see mistakes in all phases that just never got cleaned up over the course of the season.

I also think a lot of people underestimated how hard leadership and chemistry are to replace. Sometimes you lose more than just production from year to year. You lose identity, edge, accountability, confidence in big moments. The great LSU teams always had that presence about them, and this team spent a lot of the year searching for it instead of playing with it naturally.

And honestly, that’s what makes the season so disappointing. It wasn’t a lack of ability. It was that we kept waiting to see this group fully click… and it just never consistently happened.

Alondra Villarreal, Audio Producer, Off the Bench: What surprised me most about this team wasn’t just that LSU was historically bad; it’s that they were THIS bad under Jay Johnson. Even in 2024, you still felt a fight and a buy in from that team. This team did not feel bought into Jay and LSU’s philosophy. That’s what felt so shocking about this season. There were stretches where LSU looked completely disconnected from the very things that normally define a Jay Johnson program. The fundamentals slipped, the urgency wasn’t always there, and at times the team looked almost indifferent. To me, that’s the most surprising part of it all.

Taylor Sharp, Video Producer, Off the Bench: The pitching staff. I assumed the fielding would take its lumps early in the season because Steven Milam was the only returning starter, but this pitching staff was touted by many to be the deepest, most-talented pitching staff that Jay Johnson has had, and that turned out to be completely wrong. I felt like this staff never had a true ace. Also, who was your closer? You had some options, but not that one guy that you felt confident could deliver consistently in big moments.

Charles Hanagriff, Co-Host, Live at Lunch: The players that regressed from last year (or 2024) to this year. LSU baseball is hard. The pressure barrier is real. The competition is a step up from wherever it is that new players were playing previously. It’s why not every blue chip freshman or hot shot transfer can make it in the program.

That said, once they do perform well at this level, it is not unrealistic to expect that to continue or improve. Casan Evans, Zac Cowan, Gavin Guidry, Cooper Williams, Mavrick Rizy (despite his lower ERA), Jaden Noot, and Chris Stanfield all had significantly worse seasons than they did prior to 2026.

Yes, there were injuries, and role changes at play for some of these, but the drop-off was dramatic.

LSU doesn’t win the National Championship last season without most of those guys (and Guidry was a contributor on the 2023 team).

Hunt Palmer, Host, The Hunt Palmer Show: I was most surprised by Jay Johnson’s candid press conferences in midseason. He clearly knew in April that there were deep problems and said as much. While it’s disheartening that those problems existed, his early grasp on it somehow inspires confidence that he’ll get it fixed. Johnson is generally pretty close to the vest with media. He let it fly this year.

Matt Moscona, Host, After Further Review: After losing Kade Anderson and Anthony Eyanson, it was natural to expect a step back on the mound. I could not have imagined LSU finishing dead last in the SEC in ERA. Casan Evans, William Schmidt, Cooper Williams and Maverick Rizy all had potential for big sophomore seasons and none materialized as expected.

Matthew Musso, Audio Producer, After Further Review: The thing that surprised me most about this LSU baseball team is that the pitching never improved. Early in the season they struggled, and I could have easily foreseen a scenario like 2024 where with time and experience in new roles they found their stride in the back half of conference play. It never happened. They never came close to consistency in the strike zone. Just too many free passes all year long between walks, wild pitches and hit batsmen. It also didn’t matter the role. The starters struggled; the bullpen struggled. The returners struggled. The transfers struggled. It was staff wide, and something I cannot ever recall seeing.

Paul O’Neill, Video Producer, After Further Review: The most surprising thing to me was the number of times LSU was swept this season. The Tigers were swept a program record five times and were swept in three straight SEC series against Ole Miss, Texas A&M and Mississippi State. Each loss this year had fans more concerned and wondering if the Tigers could ever turn it around. This year has easily been one of the biggest let downs after such high expectations coming into this year. If anyone can turn things around quickly for a rebound next year, it’s Jay Johnson.