By RON HIGGINS, Journal Sports
BATON ROUGE – Hoping to snap his rapidly-sinking 18th-ranked team out of his three-week nosedive to start SEC play, LSU head baseball coach Jay Johnson banned his players from using cell phones in the locker room last week.
Johnson reasoned such a takeaway was necessary for his team’s total commitment and focus of pulling out of its funk of opening league play with series road losses at Mississippi State and Arkansas sandwiching a home series loss to Florida.
And then No. 7 Vanderbilt came to Baton Rouge last Thursday.
Despite the Commodores’ 10-6 first-game loss, they essentially erased any remains of LSU’s waning competitive spirit in wins of 8-6 in Game 2 on Friday and 13-3 in Game 3 on Saturday.
What’s left of a shell of the defending national champions became the first LSU team to lose its first four SEC series since the 1969 team.
The ’69 squad lost all six conference series when it went 4-13 in its then 18-game (one game at Ole Miss was canceled) schedule.
“They have to answer the competitive level question,” said Johnson of his team (21-12 overall, 3-9 SEC) after Saturday’s series-ending run-rule beatdown. “They need to answer who they’re accountable to. They’re obviously accountable to the program and to me and our coaches and everybody that supports LSU baseball, which is a lot of people. But they’ve got to start with themselves.”
Johnson knows he’s had to replace seven of last season’s nine starters, his starting pitching rotation and top reliever. And he understands the Tigers have a top-heavy league schedule in which they play four of their first five series against top 7 nationally-ranked teams with No. 4 Tennessee up next in Knoxville starting on Friday.
But he’s irked by his squad’s repeated failures to execute when each SEC series has been at turning points, and then getting run-ruled in 3 of 4 Game 3 losses.
“It just seems we can’t put anybody away with two strikes and we can’t get off the field with two outs,” Johnson said.
There’s a laundry list of failures in key moments such as:
- Game 1 at Mississippi State: With the Bulldogs leading 6-3 through six innings, LSU failed to get a runner home with two outs three times in the first six innings of an eventual 10-4 Hail State win.
- Game 2 vs. Florida: LSU reliever Nate Ackenhausen was two strikes away with two outs in the ninth from securing a 4-3 LSU victory that would have won the series since the Tigers won 6-1 in Game 1. Instead, he gave up the game-tying single, Florida won 6-4 in 11 innings and crushed LSU 12-2 the next day in Game 3 to win the series.
- Game 2 at Arkansas: After the Hogs won 7-4 in Game 1, Tigers’ shortstop Michael Braswell III charged an Arkansas ground ball and whiffed with the game tied 3-3 in the 10th. The next Hogs’ batter ripped a walk-off double down the left field line, scoring the winning run from first base in a 4-3 Arkansas victory that captured the series. The No. 1 Razorbacks completed the sweep.
- Game 2 vs. Vanderbilt: After holding on for a 9-6 win over Vandy in the series opener last Thursday, LSU was four outs away from securing a 6-5 victory in Game 2 to clinch the series. Ackenhausen struck out the first batter in the top of the eighth, hit the second batter on a 2-2 pitch, retired the next batter on a second-out fly ball, and then gave up a first-pitch two-run homer to Vandy’s Jayden Davis for a 7-6 lead.
In the bottom of the LSU eighth, the Tigers had the tying run at third and the go-ahead run at first with one out. Instead of playing it safe by having nine-hole hitter freshman Stephen Milam possibly sacrifice bunt which at worse would be a second out with LSU’s top of the batting order coming to the plate, Milam was ordered to swing away and hit into a rally-killing double play.
Vandy added a run in the ninth, LSU got nothing in its last at-bats and the Commodores won 8-6 and captured the series.
“Let’s go back to Thursday night (Game 1),” Johnson said. “We’re winning 9-0 (with two outs in the sixth). And we made an error (a fielding blunder by Braswell) which forced us to bring him (LSU’s most effective reliever Griffin Herring) in the game. If we don’t have to bring him in the game, he’s finishing the game last night (Game 2), and I felt pretty good about our chances to win that game.”
LSU’s “roll over and play dead” Game 3 performances are even worse.
Using a hodgepodge of pitchers, the Tigers have been outscored 47-15 and outhit 51-27 in Game 3 losses to Mississippi State, Florida, Arkansas and Vanderbilt. Almost half of the opponents’ hits – 24 – have been for extra bases (12 doubles, 12 homers).
In the latest Game 3 collapse, an eight-inning run-rule loss to Vanderbilt, the Commodores scored in every inning and LSU batters struck out at least once in every inning.
LSU hasn’t hit over .260 in any SEC series. Tigers’ batters have more strikeouts (118) than hits (100) in league play.
The Tigers’ pitching staff hasn’t had an earned run average lower than 6.33 in any SEC series. Bullpen returnees Ackenhausen and Thatcher Hurd (who had started Game 3 in the Mississippi State and Florida series before being placed in the bullpen) are both 0-3 in SEC play with respective ERAs of 9.00 and 10.97.
“There’s a nice (national championship) trophy from 2023 because of Nate Ackenhausen and Thatcher Hurd,” Johnson said. “I’m going to continue to pitch those guys. I believe in them.
“We’ve rebooted this thing. They deserve that opportunity. We need to get some different guys in the mix, also. We’re going to figure it out. I believe in the pitching staff that we have. They need to execute a little bit better and they want to execute a little bit better.”
After a non-conference home outing against McNeese Tuesday, LSU completes its Murderers Row of ranked SEC opponents in a three-game series at Tennessee (26-6, 7-5 SEC) beginning Friday.
Last season, the Tigers won 2 of 3 games in the regular season series in Baton Rouge, then beat Tennessee twice (6-3, 5-0) in the College World Series to eliminate the Vols.
After Tennessee began SEC play this season with a series loss at Alabama, the Vols won back-to-back home series vs. Ole Miss and Georgia.
This past weekend at Auburn, Tennessee run-ruled the Tigers 15-3 in seven innings in Sunday’s series-deciding Game 3. The Vols hit 14 homers in the series, including 6 each in Saturday’s 12-2 Game 2 win and again Sunday.
Contact Ron at ronhigginsmedia@gmail.com
