This isn’t just like any other season for coach Paul Mainieri’s baseball team.
With 20 lettermen, including eight seniors, returning for LSU this season, Mainieri knows this is a time for the Tigers to accomplish something special.
“Most years you are losing a segment of your team,” Mainieri said. “But this year happens to be one of those years where we we’ve got quite a veteran presence on this team. We have a chance to do something really special this season.”
Senior shortstop Kramer Robertson, junior outfielder Greg Deichmann, senior second baseman Cole Freeman and senior pitcher Jared Poche’ all chose to return to LSU for the 2017 season.
Freeman, Robertson, Deichmann, and Poche’ all were selected in the MLB draft.
Freeman said it was a hard decision to leave LSU.
“It’s LSU, it’s a hard place to leave,” Freeman said. “ I had the option of leaving and we had the talk and what number it was going to take. Long story short, they didn’t get to the number I was looking for and honestly it was going to take a lot for me to get pulled away from here.”
Junior pitcher Alex Lange is also back and expected to be a top pick in the 2017 MLB Draft in June.
Mainieri has already titled the group of drafted returnees in Robertson, Deichmann, Freeman and Poche.
“I want to call those guys my ‘fab four’,” Mainieri said. “Our team would have a significantly different look to it if those four guys did not come back. I still think that we’d have a really good team, don’t get me wrong. We’d get the job done, but having those four guys back just elevates your confidence in your team. Not just because of the experience and the ability, but the leadership that they bring back to your team.”
Robertson finished last season batting .324 with 39 RBI’s, Deichmann was the team’s power hitter, belting 11 home runs with 57 RBI’s.
Freeman had the highest batting average on the team batting .329 with 27 RBI’s.
Poche’ — who is 12 wins away from becoming LSU’s all-time wins leader — finished with a 3.35 ERA and a 9-4 record. Lange finished with a 3.79 ERA and 8-4 record.
Lange also finished fourth in the Southeastern Conference with 125 strikeouts.
The growth the team has made on and off the field has been noticed by Mainieri. He noted that he hasn’t coached a team this experienced since the 2012 season which had ten juniors and five seniors returning.
“When guys like Greg Deichmann, Cole Freeman, Kramer Robertson came to see me in my office, they sat there and talked to me, and it wasn’t like a coach talking to some young kid,” Mainieri said. “You almost felt like you were talking to an adult. I just see a level of maturity among those guys that maybe is even more so than last year going into the season.”
