LSU’s fielding percentage this season is 95.6%. The last LSU team to have a fielding percentage that low was the 2007 team.
In 2007, Smoke Laval was in what would be his last season as head coach. LSU was unknowingly about to set out to win its third national championship in football with Matt Flynn at quarterback, and the Billboard Hot-100 No. 1 song was “Irreplaceable” by Beyoncé.
LSU has since learned the hard way how irreplaceable good defensive play is. It has been through three SEC series and has won only one. Both of their home series against unranked Texas A&M and Auburn have been lost. They sit at 19-9 overall, with difficult matchups against Arkansas, Ole Miss and Vanderbilt still ahead.
LSU has played 28 games this year, and only four of them have been without at least one error. Three of them were against non-power conference opponents (Southern, McNeese, Bethune-Cookman).
It came to a head once again last Saturday afternoon in LSU’s series finale against Auburn. Cade Doughty had already committed an error at shortstop earlier in the game and was poised to not make another. LSU needed one out to continue its rally, as Auburn had runners on the first and third, with Sonny DiChiara, Auburn’s 263-pound slugging first baseman who leads the SEC in OPS, at the plate. They trailed by two, but the lineup was going to flip over in the bottom of the inning. They needed this out, for the win and for their confidence.
DiChiara grounded the ball in between Doughty and Jordan Thompson, who, due to his 10 errors this season, was moved from shortstop to second base, while they were shifted to the left for the hulking right-handed batter.
Doughty looked like he was ready to make the play, moving toward first base. Instead, Thompson collided with him, and the ball zipped into the outfield, scoring Auburn’s crucial third insurance run.
“We were both just trying to make a play, and we ran into each other,” Thompson said postgame. “Some miscommunication. That’s just what happened.”
The most ironic part is the play wasn’t scored as an error. DiChiara was given a base hit for his efforts. But it was a microcosm of why LSU is experiencing these defensive issues: players trying to do too much. That has manifested in the low fielding percentage and in the eye test.
Sometimes, while the scorebook may not reflect it, there are plays that the players, the coaching staff, and the fans feel that the team should be making. A good example of this was the potential groundout that scooted past Tre’ Morgan for a hit on Thursday night in the fifth inning, six-run onslaught Auburn laid on LSU. It was a play that wasn’t scored an error, but one that Morgan knows he should have made.
Being a good defensive team doesn’t mean just avoiding errors. Good defensive teams make the easier plays without hitches and make the more difficult plays more commonly than the average. Defense in baseball is a spectrum, not an absolute. Right now, LSU is having trouble steering clear of errors and making the plays that many of the top teams LSU wants to compete with are capable of completing.
The defensive problems are not limited to one player and not showing much progress in improving. If the Tigers don’t solve this dilemma soon, all the upside this team brought into the season with elite hitting ability and talented pitching prowess will not bear any fruit.
It’s hard to pinpoint what LSU can do to improve in the field without sacrificing significant offensive firepower. Jacob Berry and Doughty have struggled with their gloves, but they have been two of the conference’s best hitters. Johnson was adamant Saturday that he feels the two of them will be LSU’s best choices to play.
“It’s like, the offensive players that Cade and Jacob are, if they were elite defenders, they wouldn’t be in college right now,” Johnson said. “We’ve got to do the best we can to get better. They’re high character guys, they’re hard workers, and we’ll just keep going.”
While the infield play has been ugly to watch, there is a bright spot for LSU: the outfield and the range they’ve been covering. Gavin Dugas in left, Dylan Crews in center and Giovanni DiGiacomo in right has settled in as LSU’s best defensive outfield combination. Dugas and Crews each made some phenomenal catches on Friday night to boost Ma’Khail Hilliard’s ability on the mound and get LSU a win in the second game of the series.
If there is a coach that is taking on the responsibility to remain diligent in the work he and his players are putting in, it’s Johnson. The growing pain that the team is feeling right now is something Johnson had speculated could happen at the beginning of the year. That doesn’t excuse the mistakes or make them less imminent, but for Johnson to be aware of the problem and take accountability is a good first step.
“It’s about work; it’s about self-discipline,” Johnson said. “It’s about not getting discouraged. It’s about continuing to invest in the things we need to do to be better, and that’s my job as a leader: to help them do those things.”
But it has to happen soon. Until the defense improves, the ceiling for the team will remain the same: a decent tournament team who can spray the ball offensively but will ultimately falter when the defense needs to make a stop for them.
And that’s not something LSU will be satisfied with.