AROUND THE HORN: LSU sweeps Purdue Fort Wayne

By Hunt Palmer

LSU’s pitching staff stole the show on Opening Weekend.

Kade Anderson the tone Friday with five great innings, and the 11 guys who followed him all had good outings. Not a single stinker among them.

As always, it’s important to contextualize the discussion with the opponent. Purdue Fort Wayne was bad last year and is probably bad this year. That renders some of the numbers less meaningful. The earned runs allowed, two, and the strikeouts, 45, are great. In fact, 45 is the most strikeouts in a three-game set against one opponent since records began in 1992.

But that’s opponent driven.

Velocity and strikes are the same against the Mastodons or the Yankees. LSU had 10 guys hit 95-plus on the radar gun, and the Tigers walked two batters in 27 innings. A 45:2 strikeout to walk ratio is worth mentioning.

Casan Evans throws 99 mph. He threw 18 strikes and five balls. Anderson’s strike to ball ratio was 2:1. Sixteen of DJ Primeaux’s 21 pitches were strikes. Mavrick Rizy threw seven strikes in nine pitches. The list goes on and on.

Purdue Fort Wayne only got to 14 three-ball counts in 96 plate appearances (14.5%). It’s hard to hit when you are almost never in control of the count.

As far as some of the highlights of the pitching, Shores has to be at the top of the list. He was sitting at 96 mph with the fastball for much of four innings. That dipped a couple of mph in the fifth, but his command never faltered. He threw more than a handful of really sharp sliders. After the game, he mentioned that he’d put a ton of work in with that pitch. It showed.

I don’t know how the pitching staff is going to shake out, but I really like him on Sundays with that “stuff” profile.

I thought the freshmen may have been bright spot No. 2. All four were able to enter in low leverage spots, and all four were sensational. Evans was throwing 98 for two innings and snapped off two really good sliders for strikeouts. He finished with four of those. Williams struck out the side to finish Friday’s game. Rizy overpowered the ninth inning Saturday, and Schmidt set down eight of the nine he faced Sunday with four strikeouts. He sat 95-96 with the fastball and used that hammer of a curveball well. They didn’t issue a single walk in their college debuts.

I’m not sure Williams is a high-leverage guy right now, but Johnson would absolutely turn to the other three in a tight spot right this minute.

Anderson passed his first test. Let’s keep in mind that the bar is a little higher for Anderson because he’s the presumed ace. So, it’s going to be a month before we get a sense for how ready he is.

Blake Money pitched the first three Fridays of 2022 and went 20.2 innings allowing just 12 hits and one earned run with 24 strikeouts and four walks. He lost his gig a few weeks into SEC play.

I’m not comparing Anderson to Money. I think Anderson is a greater talent. But we can’t get caught up in numbers against these overmatched teams.

It was obvious that Anderson’s slider is much improved. It’s a far tighter pitch that his breaking ball he featured last year. It also tunnels much better. Anderson’s velocity dipped in the fifth, which is no surprise, but he’ll build up over the course of the next month.

Anthony Eyanson’s Saturday showing was interesting. When I started on the LSU beat in 2011, a 94 mph fastball with a breaking ball and splitter would have been an outlier of an arsenal. I was covering starters like Austin Ross, Kurt McCune, Cody Glenn, Jared Poche and Eric Walker. All of those guys were quality SEC pitchers throwing 87-91 mph. The guys who threw as hard as Eyanson does were the aces like Kevin Gausman and Aaron Nola.

This weekend Eyanson felt like the pitchability guy. And that’s because he is. He just does it at 94. I don’t know that we saw Eyanson’s best stuff on Saturday. The curveball lacked the bite I’ve seen on it previously. I do think the splitter is going to be his best pitch.

While he did strike out six in five innings, it didn’t feel as dominant as the other arms. I predicted that Eyanson will lead the team in strikeouts in my predictions piece. I’d take that back right now if the internet would let me. But he can still be a great rotation piece by inducing weak contact and making big pitches when he needs to.

One bullpen name to keep in mind is Connor Benge. He’s a max effort righty with a short shelf life, but that heater is firm and the slider is sharp. He hasn’t gotten a ton of press, but here’s the role I see him in:

Starter is out of gas in the sixth. Runner on second with one out. Two righties coming up. That’s not a Ware spot. It’s Benge for 13 pitches over two hitters to let it rip at 96.

Offensively, Daniel Dickinson was the story for two days, and then he hit a missile with the bases loaded in the first on Sunday, but it was right at the shortstop. I already know Dickinson can mash lower-level pitching. He did it at Utah Valley for two years.

His homer on Saturday was really wind aided, but he did hit the ball hard most of the weekend. He’s such an important piece to this team, but we’re not going to know how good he is until early April.

I loved that Jared Jones took five walks, was hit by a pitch and hit a mistake he saw off the scoreboard. That has to be his identity.

Derek Curiel hit the ball hard early and often. He collected four hits in 11 at bats and one was a line shot of a homer.

Ashton Larson started one of the three games and still drove in seven runs.

I don’t think LSU has two 20 homer guys in this lineup. Jones will get there. It’s possible that no one else gets to 15. But one here and there from the Dickinson, Larson, Curiel, Milam, Brown crew will have to be the recipe. If they can all hit 9-to-11, you’ve got enough power. Good to see those first three leave the yard this weekend.

The Purdue Fort Wayne pitching staff stunk, so I’m not going to dive too deeply into the offensive numbers.

LSU scored in seven of eight innings on Friday and four of the eight on Saturday. Sunday wasn’t as steady. I did like that just about everyone got at bats, and Larson gave a great quote on Sunday about waiting your turn in a deep lineup.

“I think you’re just rooting for the guys who are out there, and you just want to win. Most importantly, LSU gets the win.”

Hopefully he truly feels that way. Jake Brown, Josh Pearson, Ethan Frey, Tanner Reaves, Cade Arrambide, Luis Hernandez and a whole host of pitchers need to feel that way because sometimes they won’t be on the field.

Defensively, I thought LSU was very good. The infield made every play, and Curiel made a great play on a line drive to left field Sunday. The only scored errors were a catcher’s interference on Friday and Primeaux throwing the ball away on Saturday.

LSU mishandled a 1^st and 3^rd play that plated a run on Sunday, and Arrambide allowed a wild pitch to get by for another run on Saturday. It wasn’t perfect, but it was good.

The base stealing wasn’t. Dickinson got a bad jump and was thrown out. Curiel was pegged as well. I don’t love running in front of Jones much at all, but I understood it with the wind whipping in on Friday.

Overall, LSU played rock solid baseball against a bad team and displayed a ton of talent in the process.

Opening Weekend doesn’t prove what you can’t do, only what you can.

LSU can trot 10 guys out who throw 95 mph. The AVERAGE fastball was 94.2 mph.

LSU can dominate the strike zone from the mound and in the box.

LSU can deploy four left-handed hitters on Friday (without Tanner Reaves in the lineup) and seven right-handed hitters Saturday.

LSU can play an (essentially) errorless weekend (with a record number of strikeouts to assist in it).

Now it’s on to a midweek with Southern at The Box and a trip to Nicholls. Omaha is the next weekend opponent, and the Mavericks were swept by Tulane over the weekend allowing 10-plus runs in every game.

SEC action feels a long way away, but the season is here.