SEC Baseball Tournament Day 2: And then there were eight

By Chris Marler

The second day of the SEC Baseball Tournament is over, and it was a spectacle. There were 14,471 people at the night session for LSU at Auburn and we were treated to 14 hours of incredible baseball.

LSU’s season comes to an end 

Baseball isn’t played on paper, and you can’t win ‘em all. 

The 2026 LSU Tigers may be the best example of both of those cliches. It was a disappointing season for LSU and Jay Johnson. There were a lot of pieces on this team that were supremely talented, but from the beginning of the season it just never seemed to come together. 

The hitting struggled for a lot of the season. The pitching struggled for almost the entire season. And, when one of those things was going well, it seemed like the other was doing the opposite. 

Nice crowd for Auburn-LSU baseball in Birmingham’s finest suburb. pic.twitter.com/jO3m7gHbNx

— Michael Casagrande (@ByCasagrande) May 21, 2026

The season was frustrating for a number of reasons. Expectations around LSU baseball are always sky-high, and not just because the program has won two national titles in the last four years. It’s also because there’s a proven track record of this team finding ways to turn things around.

That 2024 season that followed the 2023 national title got off to a brutal start, as well, but they rallied and made it to regionals. They almost made it out of regionals, too. That’s where the frustration really lies. Baseball is a long season, so a slow start in February and March, or a stumble to the finish in May doesn’t hamstring your postseason chances entirely. Playing inconsistently from February to May does, and that’s where LSU found themselves this year. 

Now the fun begins. Elite coaches never waste a loss. Kirby Smart and Nick Saban talk about that all the time. Using a loss or a bitter end to a season should never go wasted or as a missed opportunity for motivation. 

Jay Johnson won’t allow that to happen. He’s long overdue for another national title now that the Tigers went a whole one singular season without one. 

ABS continues to get it right 

A lot was made out of the issues with ABS in the SEC Tournament before a game was ever even played. People don’t like change. Everyone knows that. What people should like even less is a multimillion dollar sport being impacted by incorrect calls. 

There is a human element involved in the game of baseball, sure. Lengthy reviews in football, especially for targeting, are extremely frustrating to the pace of play itself. That doesn’t mean that the interruption of play isn’t a small price for getting the calls right. 

It was discussed how quickly counts can flip in favor of hitters or pitchers when an umpire expands the strike zone. Just because it has happened before doesn’t mean it should happen still. Maybe it’s because this Atlanta native is still scarred from Livan Hernandez in the 1997 NLCS. Either way, I want the calls to be correct. 

If LSU came back to beat Auburn these two strike three calls that were overturned by ABS challenges would have been HUGE.

This is why ABS is good for the game of baseball. I wouldn’t be upset if it was implemented into the 2026 College World Series, I’d actually applaud the NCAA pic.twitter.com/2R2AdIzRp5

— Noah Bieniek (Bee-Nick) (@NoahB77_) May 21, 2026

The MLB’s usage of the ABS system has seen an overturned rate of 53 percent. So far, through two days and eight games of the SEC Tournament, the overall challenge success rate is 62.1 percent. Challenges from batters on called strikes are at 50 percent and challenges from catchers are at a staggering 66.7 percent. 

Baseball is a game of failure. If you fail seven out of ten at-bats you may be a literal Hall of Famer because you’re hitting .300. Hitting a baseball is hard enough. Don’t take the bat out of the hitters hands because we have a human element we want to preserve for the sake of tradition.

Thursday’s Schedule 

The 16-team format is unique since it’s single elimination and provides a built-in day off after the first two rounds. That is way less about the players rest and more about having a built in safety net in case a weather delay rears its ugly head. 

That is the case for Thursday’s action, which was moved up today for a much earlier start time. Here is the schedule for the Quarterfinal round of the tournament. 

• Game 9: Mississippi State vs. Georgia, 12 p.m. on SEC Network
• Game 10: Florida vs. Alabama, 30 minutes after on SEC Network

🌧️ SCHEDULE UPDATE

Due to possible inclement weather in the Hoover area on Thursday, May 21 – Game 9 of the SEC Baseball Tournament between @HailStateBB and @BaseballUGA will begin at 12 PM CT. Gates will open at 11 AM.

Game 10 between @GatorsBB vs. @AlabamaBSB will follow… pic.twitter.com/q3fQ3omurE

— Southeastern Conference (@SEC) May 21, 2026