By Hunt Palmer
Memorial Day Weekend was quiet at The Box.
Usually, LSU is traveling back from Hoover and preparing for NCAA Tournament play. For the first time in 15 years, that wasn’t the case. LSU’s season ended on Wednesday of last week. All eyes are now on next season.
Jay Johnson’s offseasons start with exit meetings from the current roster. Plans are put in place for summer baseball or instruction. Taking June baseball off the table likely means very few players will simply get the summer off. That’s pretty common when the Tigers play 12 to 15 June games. This year there will be none.
In this series, we’ll assess the current roster without getting into the signing class. Those MLB Draft decisions are more than a month away, so we’ll cover them in July.
We start with the Tiger infield and its centerpiece, who will have a decision to make.
THE INFIELD
WHO IS GONE?
Brayden Simpson, Seth Dardar, Zach Yorke, Tanner Reaves
WHO CAN RETURN?
Steven Milam, Mason Braun, Jack Ruckert, Ethan Clauss, Trent Caraway, John Pearson
THE OUTLOOK
The graduates struggled. That’s obvious.
Dardar had his moments including huge home runs against Kentucky and Tennessee. Injuries hampered him, and he only started 36 games. Yorke, Simpson and Reaves lost starting roles in the early and midseason. All four are out of eligibility.
That brings us to Milam. I’ll just be blunt; I do not expect him back for a fourth season. With that said, the possibility remains. His professional limitation is not fixable. He’s 5-foot-6 today. He’ll be that for this MLB Draft and the next one. So, it’s not something he can work on.
I’m confident he could get mid-to-high six figures signing as a junior somewhere between rounds three and seven. As always, it only takes one team. That’s a large range, but that’s what you get with a player who is going to be polarizing when assessed by MLB teams. He is an undersized infielder with an elite glove, switch hitting offensive potential and a streaky college track record. There’s real positive and real negative.
LSU can make him some financial opportunities. It just depends on what the MLB thinks of Milam, Milam thinks about another year at LSU and what that leaves on the table in the draft this summer.
If he’s back, it’s just a massive stabilizing force in LSU’s defense and lineup. If he’s gone, LSU needs to add a shortstop in the transfer portal.
Braun is not a finished product at first base. He’s grown up an outfielder, but he defended reasonably on the first. Jared Jones grew into a good first baseman. He had some hands skills from his time as a catcher, though. Next to come from Braun is the power, and it’s already in there. His first college homer was smoked to the opposite field. He hit a ball over 430 feet in a high school showcase as a senior. He could be the everyday first baseman. If he needs to play left field, he can do that, too. But his bat will be in there.
John Pearson did some good things with the bat and finished the season with some better defense over at third when he was healthy. His eight errors topped the team, but two of those came at first base. I don’t think Pearson is ever going to be an elite glove man at third. If LSU has a championship level team, Pearson is probably a right-handed DH. Maybe an everyday DH. He hit .254 as a sophomore with eight home runs. Four of those homers came in SEC play. The Tiger legacy is draft-eligible this year, but it would be a surprise if he left school.
Then come the freshmen. Candidly, they were not supposed to play this year, but they were forced into action. Early on, the lights were too bright. Ruckert kicked some very routine ground balls. Clauss didn’t step on second base in Oxford. It was a mess.
Eventually, Ruckert found his footing and played the rest of the way. He hit .232 with five extra base hits. His strikeout rate was relatively low, only 11 in 18 starts and 69 at bats. It’s a big summer for the Catholic High product. No matter what Milam does or who shows up from the signing class or transfer additions, I feel Ruckert is going to be in a competition for time in the middle infield.
Clauss falls into the category that LSU has had trouble keeping around– infielders who don’t play much early on. Mikey Ryan left. So did David Hogg. Ryan Kucherak left. So did Austen Roellig. That’s just the last two seasons. Clauss was little used but has some ability.
Then there’s Caraway who is in his money year but lost his job and didn’t play much at all late. In fact, his only May playing time was in the season-ending loss, and he didn’t take an at bat.
OVERVIEW
Right now, I’d bet on Braun as the first baseman for next season. Johnson said he wasn’t going to chase power in the portal. He wants the homegrown players to grow into that like Jake Brown and Cade Arrambide did. Braun is the perfect candidate for that. The other three spots are in flux. Milam would slot in at short if he returns. If not, Ruckert will have to compete with a transfer or two and the high school class.
Pearson will have a battle on his hands at third base, too. We’ll just have to see from who. The not-so-small plus here is that Braun, Pearson and Ruckert played huge roles in LSU’s 32 SEC games this season, and there was a chance in February they were going to play none. The 21 and 22-year-olds slipped up early. That hurt the 2026 team but may have helped LSU in 2027.
Time will tell.
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