By Hunt Palmer
Seven flags whip in the Baton Rouge breeze outside Alex Box Stadium.
None of the seven reads “2017 National Champions,” but that team was great. Part of the reason that team was great was the trio of Alex Lange, Jared Poche and Eric Walker. For 18 weeks, that group manned the rotation.
Since Walker exited the Oregon State game with a numb arm, LSU has been in search of three reliable starters.
That search continues.
Kade Anderson is a quality ace. He needs to keep the baseball in the building, but more on that later. Anthony Eyanson is a solid No. 2. He misses a lot of bats and is keeping LSU in games. The third spot in LSU’s rotation is now a hole.
In six games, Chase Shores sports an SEC ERA of 7.59, and opponents are hitting .302. Those stats include five innings of one-run baseball in what Jay Johnson called the worst conditions to hit he’s ever coached in up in Norman three weeks ago. Outside of that, Shores has allowed 18 earned in 16.1 innings.
Most college baseball teams don’t have three studs in their rotation. TBA is a common placeholder in weekend previews. That said, a solidified rotation is such a postseason luxury. It doesn’t appear LSU will enter its postseason with that asset.
Crazy things happen in the tournament. Nate Ackenhausen shuts Tennessee down. Caleb Gilbert uses a friendly home plate umpire to choke off Oregon State. Will Hellmers puts North Carolina in a pretzel.
The lack of a third starter doesn’t doom LSU. It does weaken your odds.
In a regional, you have to go win three games at a minimum. LSU has done that six times in 10 weekends this year. Six weeks from now, it appears one of those games will have to come from “all hands on deck” as opposed to a third starter.
Shores’s struggles are a little puzzling. The fastball is not flat. It runs hard to the arm side at 95 mph plus. He can throw some good sliders. A big league organization will take a chance on him in July. It just hasn’t clicked yet, and the sample size is large enough now to suggest that his finding another gear is unlikely.
The question becomes, how much can you get out of him? LSU has five weeks to navigate that.
SERIES SHIFTER
For me, the biggest out of the weekend came in the fourth inning of game two on Friday. LSU led 3-0, and Alabama loaded the bases with two outs for Justin Lebron. Jay Johnson went to the mound to chat with Anthony Eyanson and his defense.
Then Eyanson fell behind Lebron 3-0. He worked the count full and spun a slider that the nation’s best hitter waved over the top of.
The Tigers immediately added two to the lead in the bottom half on a Milam single, and they needed all of it a 4-3 win.
Huge pitch by Eyanson to trust his breaking ball and execute it in that high leverage spot.
OFFENSE EVALUATION
Scoring four runs in each of the final two games isn’t ideal, especially considering Zane Adams has been a human powder keg the last month.
However, LSU collected 32 hits and drew 12 walks. That’s 44 baserunners which is a quality number. Five home runs is enough. Ten extra base hits works.
The only concerning number from the weekend is the 30 strikeouts. LSU has been among the SEC’s best at putting the ball in play. This weekend equaled the Texas weekend for the most strikeouts for LSU this season.
Jared Jones is struggling with the high fastball. He’s up to 27 strikeouts in 18 SEC games. That’s an adjustment he’s going to have to make.
On the flip side, Chris Stanfield has 12 doubles in 18 SEC games. The offensive progression of Stanfield and Michael Braswell from one SEC school to LSU is going to be a major selling point for Jay Johnson in the transfer portal moving forward.
Those guys have been miles better at LSU than their previous stop.
ANDERSON’S ARM
I got multiple text messages Thursday about Kade Anderson’s home run problems. Is there a correlation between his 135-pitch outing and the last two weeks where he’s given up 11 earned runs in 10 innings.
I can’t be sure, but the evidence suggests no.
A dip in velocity or control would be a red flag. Neither has been an issue. He’s throwing in the mid 90s, and he didn’t walk anyone Thursday night. He also struck out 10. He just left four balls over the middle of the plate, and Alabama crushed them all.
Anderson’s lines against Alabama, Mississippi State and Auburn haven’t been good. He needs to be sharper moving forward.
That said, he looks healthy, and his stuff is good enough to miss a ton of bats.
I didn’t like the 135 pitches in Norman, but I see no real evidence to suggest it’s been harmful to Anderson’s last two starts. He now gets another extra day of rest before a ferocious Tennessee offense comes the The Box. He’ll need to be at his best on Friday.
POSTSEASON POSITION
LSU is in a great spot in terms of its resume. The Tigers are 12-6 in league play with an RPI of eight as of Easter Sunday morning.
The next nine games will be brutal in terms of wins and losses, but they’ll be RPI bumps. Tennessee is No. 7, Texas A&M is soaring up the metrics and is No. 35 in the RPI, and Arkansas is No. 5. Considering the A&M series is on the road, LSU’s RPI isn’t going anywhere as long as the Tigers tread water for three weeks.
A 4-5 mark over these nine will keep the RPI in the single digits and put LSU at 16-11 with a chance at sewing up a national seed at South Carolina in the last weekend. A 5-4 mark would make that even easier, obviously.
LSU needs a little better starting pitching and the offense to bust down the door more frequently. That’s on the field stuff that can work its way out over the last month.
On paper, LSU is still in a very good spot.
