LSU Athletics
By Hunt Palmer
When LSU finishes last in anything athletically, things generally change.
When LSU finishes last in baseball, mountains can be moved. It doesn’t happen often to the proudest program in the sport. This year LSU’s pitching staff was the worst in the SEC when it comes to the combination of ERA (15th in front of Mizzou), walks (16th), hit batsmen (14th) and wild pitches (16th).
No staff was worse.
That’s enough for Jay Johnson to take a microscopic look at the entire operation from pitching coach Nate Yeskie to Director of Player Development- Pitching Jamie Tutko to the staff of pitchers that produced the numbers.
That microscopic look has to weigh the terrible 2026 campaign as well as the track records of all involved.
Yeskie just finished his third season as the pitching coach at LSU and his 21st as a college coach. In 2024, he inherited a staff replacing Paul Skenes, Ty Floyd and Riley Cooper who were clearly the most trusted arms in Omaha in 2023.
His 2024 staff at LSU led the country in strikeouts, finished fifth in the SEC in ERA, third in doubles allowed per game, third in opponent batting average and produced 2nd round draft picks in Gage Jump (73rd) and Luke Holman (71st) who both enjoyed the best seasons of their college careers.
With Holman and Jump gone, alongside 2nd Team All-American stopper Griffin Herring (6th round), it was time to retool the staff again in 2025. Yeskie worked with Kade Anderson (10 ER in 3.1 SEC innings as a freshman) to become the best pitcher in America. Anthony Eyanson wasn’t far behind. The UC-San Diego product jumped from 85 strikeouts in 82 IP as a Triton to 152 strikeouts in 108 IP.
Tutko and Yeskie identified the fastball as a pitch that needed to be more effective for Eyanson. They offset his grip, added two mph to it and threw it a little bit less. The whiff rate on the pitch went from 13% to 17%. They bumped the usage rate of his slider from 19% to 32%, and the spike in whiff rate was astounding, 31% to 52%. They also manipulated his rubber positioning for the first time in Eyanson’s career.
While Anderson and Eyanson turned corners, Chase Shores was scuffling. He carried an 8.31 ERA through six SEC weekends and lost his starting role on Sundays. In his final 14.2 innings, he dropped that number by three points and punched out 18. He didn’t issue a single walk in the Super Regional or Omaha.
LSU’s 2025 staff finished first in the country in strikeouts (again), second in the SEC in ERA, first in doubles allowed per game, first in home runs allowed per game and first in batting average allowed.
Considering the turnover on the staff, which is always likely at LSU, I’d suggest Yeskie and Tutko did phenomenal work in those two seasons. LSU formed a stellar one-two punch in both years with a fantastic closer. That’s usually enough to win games and series. Paired with Johnson’s track record of offense, it can be lethal as it was in 2025.
Now, it’s not without warts.
The 2024 staff was low on depth. A third starter never emerged. Thatcher Hurd saved his best for last in Chapel Hill, but he wasn’t a reliable arm all season. His ERA was 6.55. Nate Ackenhausen regressed a bit, and big arms like Christian Little, Cam Johnson, Aiden Moffitt and Javen Coleman weren’t very good.
And here’s the big one — walks.
In 2o24, LSU was ninth (of 14 teams) in the SEC in walks allowed per game. That was 11th in 2025 and dropped to dead last in 2026. There is very clearly a program philosophy to miss bats. That has worked. LSU leads the SEC in strikeouts every year. However, the walk numbers are high as a result. It didn’t hurt in 2025, but it sure did in 2026.
That’s the area LSU has to identify and improve. And it has to come with a new crop of arms, in my opinion. To the detractors who suggest Yeskie is just a product of Anderson and Eyanson which is not a sustainable recipe, I’d push back.
First, to discredit his help in their development is disingenuous. He cannot be blamed for 2026s failures and dismissed in 2024 and 2025s successes. Second, LSU produced Paul Skenes and Ty Floyd in 2023, Jump and Holman in 2024 and Anderson and Eyanson in 2o25.
Three of Johnson’s four full seasons have resulted in massively successful one-two punches who have been drafted in the top 90 picks. That is a sustainable recipe just like Duke can find a pair of lottery picks and Ohio State can find a pair of wide receivers.
Yeskie has been named National Pitching Coach of the Year twice prior to his time at LSU. He’s the only pitching coach in the country to go to Omaha with four programs. It’s a two-decade run of success.
His staffs walk too many hitters, a little more depth would be a big plus, and the bottom fell out in 2026.
I’d suggest the two prior seasons carry at least as much weight as the last three months. Maybe more. That said, I don’t see Skenes, Floyd, Anderson or Eyanson on this roster moving into next season unless Evans finds the 2.05 ERA form he pitched to a season ago.
That means LSU has to go find it. There are three options, develop it from William Schmidt, Cooper Moore, Marcos Paz and Reagan Ricken, get it through the signing class which means draft dodging and plugging a freshman into the rotation or getting it out of the portal.
The portal is expensive, especially if you have significant money tied up in Evans and Schmidt already. That I’m not certain of. There have to be offensive additions in both the infield and the outfield, too. There’s only so much money to go around.
Yeskie and the pitching department failed in 2026, but they aren’t failures. In fact, LSU has been the exact opposite in Johnson’s tenure. They squeezed every drop from a Ma’Khail Hillaird-led staff in 2022 with Jason Kelly, struck gold in 2023 with Skenes under Wes Johnson and have been very good under Yeskie. Tutko has been at LSU for all of it.
Their analytics department has all the numbers. They’ve got the lab to enhance development. They had a bad year.
The next 30 days are crucial in the portal, and the 20 after that will be massive with the MLB Draft. In the meantime, some of the returners need to have developmental summers. Blaming LSU’s pitching for the worst season in the program’s SEC pitching is completely justifiable.
Suggesting LSU’s pitching operation is broken is being a prisoner of the moment.
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