LSU baseball doesn’t rebuild, it reloads.
That was the message sophomore pitcher Zack Hess delivered to a crowd of more than 1,000 fans at LSU’s annual first pitch banquet in late January.
Hess’s rhetoric is sure to excite the fan base, but LSU coach Paul Mainieri knows reloading a roster after losing a bevy of upperclassmen to the Major League Baseball Draft is easier said than done.
The biggest question marks for the 2018 LSU baseball season appear in the starting pitcher rotation and middle infield positions, thanks to the departures of Alex Lange, Jared Poche, Cole Freeman and Kramer Robertson.
The midweek rotation shouldn’t be much of a concern for Tiger fans, as Austin Bain, Matthew Beck and Nick Bush will all reprise their roles. However, Mainieri and the coaching staff will have to start from scratch with regards to the weekend rotation.
LSU’s weekend starters will feature Hess, Caleb Gilbert and Todd Peterson to begin the season, but I don’t expect that rotation to last the entirety of the year.
Hess is being converted into a starting pitcher purely out of a need for veteran leadership in the weekend rotation, but it’s difficult to imagine the sophomore right-hander in any role other than that of a reliever after dazzling as the closing pitcher last year.
The chances of an incoming player like junior college transfer Cam Sanders or freshman Devin Fontenot making an early impact in the pitching rotation are high, and if that’s the case, fans could see Hess return to his normal bullpen duties.
Unlike the weekend pitching rotation, the infield will have a mix of new and familiar faces come opening night.
Sophomore Josh Smith will move from third base to shortstop, and sophomore Jake Slaughter will trade in his first base mitt for a third base glove. Bryce Jordan will also be back in the lineup this year after a season-ending knee injury sidelined him last year, and he’ll most likely be LSU’s starting first baseman to begin the season.
Junior college transfer Brandt Broussard will man second base as the sole newcomer in the infield ranks. Similar to Freeman, Broussard hails from Delgado Community College where he recorded stellar numbers, including a .429 batting average and a .531 on-base percentage while only committing six errors in his final season with the Dolphins.
The final piece of the 2018 puzzle is outfield. Antoine Duplantis will move to right to replace All-American Greg Deichmann, and Zach Watson will be patrolling central.
Freshman Daniel Cabrera will start in left field, and Tiger fans can expect to see him on the mound at some point this season, as well.
All things considered, I expect this baseball team to impress down the stretch. Granted, some fans will be apprehensive to set their hopes high given the circumstances surrounding the beginning of this season.
It’s tough to follow a season in which the Tigers reached the national championship series. Losing the veteran leadership that formed the nucleus of last year’s College World Series trip doesn’t serve as much of an encouragement for this season either.
There’s no need to expect a rebuilding year though. By the early looks of it, LSU has done an excellent job of filling replacing last season’s leaders with a plethora of talent.
Following the inevitable learning curve this year’s team will experience at the beginning of the season, I believe many college baseball fans around the country will be surprised by how competitive the 2018 Tigers will be.
