LSU baseball made the trip to Hoover, Alabama for the SEC Baseball Tournament on Tuesday. With the team eliminated after going 1-2 in the tournament, all eyes are set on the NCAA Tournament.
The Tigers will host a regional in the NCAA Tournament, and they will find out which three teams will be in their regional on Monday.
Regardless of who LSU matches up with, there are areas within the team that need to be evaluated and fixed by the time it retakes the field.
As the season progressed, concerns with the bullpen pitching became more common. Much of that is due to injuries in LSU’s pitching from players like Chase Shores and Garrett Edwards.
But these injuries have not run LSU dry. Instead, inconsistency has been its biggest enemy.
In the SEC Tournament, performances out of the bullpen from Nate Ackenhausen and Riley Cooper were some of the best the team has seen in some time.
Against South Carolina, Ackenhausen went 3.2 innings, struck out six and gave up no runs on just one hit. Against Arkansas, Cooper went 4.1 innings, struck out seven, and gave up no runs on just two hits. Gavin Guidry even had a productive outing as a true freshman in his one-inning appearance.
However, while some pitchers thrived, others did not. Against Texas A&M, Griffin Herring came first in relief and started his outing with a one, two, three inning. But in his next inning, his control seemed to have diminished, allowing Texas A&M to come within one run with two runners on base before being pulled.
Sam Dutton also had a tough weekend, pitching just seven pitches, which includes a three-run home run given up against Texas A&M, although those runs were attributed to Herring.
The NCAA Tournament is a time when inconsistency could be the reason your season ends. At this point in the year, if a pitcher isn’t able to deliver consistently, they might not be able to this time around.
The inconsistency did not just take place on the mound, but also at the batter’s box. When it came to situational hitting, the Tigers did not execute on several occasions.
In the loss against Arkansas, LSU went two for nine at the plate with runners in scoring position. But the lack of execution in critical situations was most noticeable against Texas A&M.
In its matchup with the Aggies, the team went three for 20 with runners in scoring position. It also went three for 12 with two outs, and five for 22 with runners on base.
As Jay Johnson said after the loss against Texas A&M, “It’s not the team with the best players, it’s the team that plays the best.”
At that point, it doesn’t matter who is at the plate. If the hitter can’t execute, and that happens multiple times throughout the game, the game won’t be won.
When the season is over, regardless of how LSU finishes, the team will likely have the first two players taken in the MLB Draft, Dylan Crews and Paul Skenes. Crews has the sixth-highest batting average in the country at .420, and Skenes has the most strikeouts in the country by a considerable margin at 167, according to d1baseball.com.
In addition, Tommy White has the third-most RBIs in the country with 91, and Hayden Travinski has been as consistent as they come. He currently has a .429 batting average, including a .538 batting average in the SEC Tournament.
This being said, LSU has the players to make a deep postseason run. There have been times when LSU has pieced all parts of the game together, and it has been able to compete with anyone during those times.
A reflection of what LSU could be is visible within Texas A&M, who came into the SEC Tournament as the No. 10 seed. Texas A&M has been playing to its full potential and some of its best baseball of the year, and it has now found itself in the SEC Championship.
LSU has the pieces to make a run like that in the NCAA Tournament and play some of the country’s best baseball, but areas of inconsistency within the team could cost LSU its season.
