Whether it’s football season in the fall or baseball getting underway in the spring, an old saying rings true around Baton Rouge — nothing matters until the start of Southeastern Conference play.
And when the Tigers arrive in Nashville on Friday to play the first of three games against Vanderbilt, that’s precisely where they will find themselves.
With mid-week games against Nicholls State and Southern remaining between now and then, LSU will likely begin conference play with a respectable record of 16-2.
Losing two nonconference games isn’t a big deal, but some of the mistakes that cost LSU those games are troubling — the infield’s defensive struggles, specifically.
Despite the persistent defensive lapses, the soft competition didn’t have enough firepower to take advantage of LSU’s fielding miscues. However, with SEC play about to begin, it’s going to get much tougher from here.
The deficiencies that can be masked by superior talent against Purdue, Toledo or UNO will be exposed against the Vanderbilts and Mississippi States of the world — both are due up for the Tigers in the next few weekends.
As the level of competition ratchets up, weaknesses will be magnified. It’s an old baseball adage that you can’t hide a poor fielder because the ball will always find them at the most crucial time.
Ironically, LSU’s best all-around player, sophomore shortstop Alex Bregman, is also its biggest liability. He’s a sensational offensive player and a force in the middle of the lineup, but his lack of fluidity at a premium defensive position has cost LSU baseball games — cough, Omaha — and will continue to do so going forward.
Bregman has committed a team high five of LSU’s 11 errors this season. Third baseman Christian Ibarra and second baseman Kramer Robertson have committed errors as well, but shortstop is a tougher position, which makes it that much easier to identify flaws.
He’s generally given a free pass by LSU coach Paul Mainieri and members of the media because of his bat and unquestioned work ethic, but no amount of practice grounders guarantees someone will become a slick fielder.
A catcher throughout high school, Bregman has clearly put in hours upon hours of work to make himself even a serviceable infielder. After watching him play on a regular basis, that work is actually at the heart of his defensive struggles.
He’s got the athletic ability, range and arm strength to play the position, but he frequently tries to do too much too quickly, which leads to errors. He’s constantly playing in fast forward and nothing is ever smooth and easy, clear signals that his intensity may actually be detrimental in the field.
Baseball is a game of patience, best played under control with a clear head space. Before the season started, Bregman said he internalized his error that allowed the game-winning run to score against UCLA during the College World Series and used it as motivation to better himself during the offseason.
That’s fine when trying to maintain focus for practice grounder 1,000 on an offseason afternoon and no one is watching. But now it looks like he’s thinking about that error every time a ball is hit in his direction.
There is no obvious position switch to shore up the defense, so it’s highly unlikely Mainieri will ever move Bregman from shortstop. So the errors are either something Bregman needs to fix, just as unlikely, or something LSU is going to have to live with all season.
Bregman was able to recover on some bobbles to play an errorless series against Purdue, but bad fielding is the kind of thing that can come back and bite a team in a big spot. And late in a one-run game against the SEC’s elite, it’s the kind of thing that loses baseball games.