The hardest challenge of an NCAA baseball coach is to find consistency past Saturday, and LSU baseball dodged this bullet twice in 2026.
Most college baseball teams struggle to find a third starting pitcher for their weekend series, and that has set LSU apart from other premier teams.
However, the Tigers have recently found themselves in that same boat. Usual Saturday starter Cooper Moore has been out, which leaves Sunday rubber matches left up to the bullpen.
That’s why the experience LSU head coach Jay Johnson has given the bullpen during midweek games has prepared this staff to take on arguably the toughest conference in the NCAA.
Since Moore’s absence in the middle of Game 2 versus Oklahoma, the LSU bullpen has been pushed to its limits, and its success comes from the short leashes given in the midweek matchups.
Every team in college baseball throws every pitcher that they can to try to get through the midweek games without burning their best weekend guys, so this usually looks like five to six different pitchers in the same game. In the Tigers’ case on Tuesday night, it took nine pitchers to get through the same number of innings played.
This is why the Bayou Bengals have soared despite one of the best starting rotations in the country being suddenly harmed.
“A lot of Sunday games in the SEC are like ‘get to the bullpen as fast as you can on Sunday,’” junior pitcher Gavin Guidry said during a midweek press conference. “Typically, guys are throwing the second time [in a weekend], and it’s not that easy to do.”
The mix of pitchers getting experience during the week has prepared LSU to have a deeper bullpen on the weekend. Guidry said that was what led LSU to winning over Tennessee in the Easter Sunday rubber match.
That game would be the second Tiger win made out of the bullpen since Moore’s injury, but the battle in Knoxville would go to 12 innings, leading to unexpected chaos for this already thrown-off staff.
Johnson gave fifth-year senior Grant Fontenot the start on Sunday, saying it was a critical choice that would put the purple and gold in its best position to win its second consecutive series with the bullpen. Johnson was up until 2 a.m. on Sunday trying to make the decision, but it ended up working out for LSU.
“The previous two days, both Casan [Evans] and William [Schmidt] beat Tennessee with fastballs for the majority of the game, and [Fontenot] had the best fastball available going into Sunday,” Johnson said during midweek press. “I thought it would make Zac [Cowan] super effective, and then left us the ability to finish the game with Gavin [Guidry].”
Johnson said that Moore is not available versus Ole Miss, but he has begun his throwing program as of Wednesday. He hopes to have him back on the bump the following weekend as the Tigers take on Texas A&M at home.
But that doesn’t distract from the fact that LSU came into the season with such a deep pitching rotation for the weekend that the fight for a Sunday bullpen game wasn’t expected by anyone.
This team has pulled together to show the fight LSU is known for on the field, and it is why the Tigers are expected to end the season in a deep tournament run each season.
