Dwarfed by his LSU baseball counterparts, third baseman Christian Ibarra employs a simple tactic when stepping to the plate to offset his unimposing 5-foot-7 frame.
“I’m just swinging about as hard as I can,” Ibarra said with a wide smile. “Anything close to the plate, I will swing at it. Even if I miss, I will swing.”
So far, so good for the Rio Hondo College transfer, as the junior has quietly crept ahead in both the lineup and the stat sheet with a .347 batting average and a .490 slugging percentage.
Ibarra, who started the season batting ninth in the Tigers’ lineup, ascended three spots in the batting order for the weekend sweep of Washington, partly because LSU coach Paul Mainieri noticed the consistency Ibarra developed through his first Division I at-bats.
“They’re going to pitch around [five-hole hitter senior Mason] Katz sometimes, and I want to have a guy in there who is more consistent with his swing,” Mainieri said.
With a high leg kick during his swing that Mainieri has compared to major leaguer José Bautista, Ibarra had trouble winning over LSU hitting coach Javi Sanchez. According to Mainieri, Sanchez returned from a recruiting visit doubting whether Ibarra could hit against superior pitching.
After watching one batting practice session, Mainieri scoffed at Sanchez’s qualms.
“When he came here and I saw him hit for the first time, I said to [Sanchez], ‘Jav, you underestimated this kid,’” Mainieri said. “This kid’s got bat speed.”
While Ibarra’s hitting needed to be reaffirmed, his defense was never in doubt as he wowed the LSU coaching staff out of junior college with his play on the left side of the infield.
But as his journey made its way to Baton Rouge, Ibarra was thrust into competition to start at shortstop with heralded freshman Alex Bregman and junior JaCoby Jones — a competition Bregman eventually won.
Ibarra was forced out of his natural position and is adjusting to the hot corner, where he hasn’t played since age 10.
The transition has reared its ugly head through the first 16 games, as Ibarra has committed five errors and has a lowly .875 fielding percentage while he adjusts to what he called a three-second difference in reaction time on ground balls.
“At short, you have so much time to react to the ball and there’s, like, 10 different plays you could make in one [third base] play,” Ibarra said. “I haven’t really adjusted to that [change].”
During his playing days, Mainieri also made the switch to shortstop and lived Ibarra’s struggles firsthand.
Mainieri also pointed to former Tiger star Michael Hollander, who made the switch to third base during the 2008 season and had the expectedly difficult transition.
But, like Hollander, Mainieri expects as time goes on, Ibarra will settle in.
“I think you’re going to see — as the weeks go on — he’s going to be an excellent third baseman,” Mainieri said. “As good a third baseman as there is in the league.”
