By GLENN GUILBEAU, Tiger Rag Editor
It was probably good that LSU baseball coach Jay Johnson did not have a press conference before leaving town on Wednesday for the Tigers’ series at No. 11 Mississippi State on Friday through Sunday.
Sometimes coaches have too much availability, which can mean too many opportunities to talk themselves into a corner. That’s what happened last weekend with Johnson after he lost the opening game of the Texas A&M series, 10-4.
The way he spoke of how he plans to change his approach to recruiting the transfer portal and how he prepares his team in the off-season and scheduling are not good topics with 17 games left in the regular season and 14 in the Southeastern Conference and the SEC Tournament.
Then he lost the next two to Texas A&M.
That’s not why he didn’t have a press conference before the weekend series this week. That is just how the schedule fell. LSU left Wednesday for Starkville, Mississippi, to play the Bulldogs (31-10, 10-8 SEC, No. 19 RPI). Johnson had planned not to have a presser this week long before the Tigers dropped to 6-12 in the Southeastern Conference and to 24-18 overall with a No. 63 RPI after six straight SEC losses.
The series opens at 6 p.m. Friday on SEC Network+ with LSU sophomore right-hander Casan Evans (2-2, 5.47 ERA) going against State sophomore left-hander Thomas Valincius (7-1, 1.81 ERA). Sophomore right-hander William Schmidt (4-4, 4.14 ERA) faces sophomore right-hander Duke Stone (6-1, 3.78 ERA) at 6:30 p.m. Saturday on ESPN2.
Look for sophomore right-hander Deven Sheerin (3-0, 2.84 ERA, 3 saves) to get the start on Sunday against sophomore left-hander Charlie Foster (0-2, 5.17 ERA) at 1 p.m. on SEC Network+. That is, if Sheerin doesn’t have to pitch in relief on Friday and/or Saturday.
“Well, we need to win a game in league play,” Johnson said on his radio show when asked about Sheerin for Sunday.
And, no, he wasn’t trying to send a motivational message to his team through the media last weekend. Most players don’t read many stories about their team for one, and he was just upset with his team’s fourth straight loss at the time. It wasn’t premeditated. He was frustrated.
“They know how I think and feel about attitude, competitiveness, communication and those types of things,” he said. “We’ve had way too many conversations about those things.”
Great, he’s human. And most everything he said was accurate.
He sounded like he was not going to be recruiting in the portal again because of how disappointing most of his portal additions have been this season. But that’s not true. He corrected that on his radio show the following Monday. He will continue to tap the portal in significant numbers.
But the good thing is, maybe he now realizes that the portal isn’t the end-all, be-all that he seemed to think it was previously. It seems to make sense to stick transfers for the most part from the better conferences like the SEC and the ACC, and the Sun Belt isn’t bad either. That way you know the hitters are seeing good pitchers, and the pitchers are seeing good hitters.
But at the same time, Daniel Dickinson was damn good last year coming from Utah Valley of the Western Athletic Conference. So was pitcher Anthony Eyanson from UC San Diego in the Big West. And let’s not forget, Paul Skenes was from Air Force in the Mountain West Conference – not exactly a titan of NCAA postseason. And Johnson would love to have his catcher back from last season right now – Luis Hernandez of Indiana State in the Missouri Valley Conference.
Without the transfers Johnson has gotten regardless of where they previously played, he may not have two national championships in the last three years. He just missed in the portal this year.
And that didn’t have as much to do with Johnson possibly not having enough roster money via NIL, collectives and revenue share, as many are saying now. The concerns he first voiced to Tiger Rag last February about some programs being more all in for baseball than LSU had more to do with the near future than with the 2026 roster.
Johnson missed on some guys he wanted, but not all because of money. Sometimes, you just miss. And sometimes players just would rather go to another school than LSU.
What Johnson has to make sure he does in the future is keep the freshman and sophomores he recruited so hard from high school, even if they haven’t played much yet. Don’t take just any portal kid over a player you’ve had in your program for a year or two.
It’s Johnson’s and his staff’s job to decide which ones to try their best to keep, even if they haven’t played much. Johnson makes a lot of money, as does his staff. Therefore, it’s their job to know who’s good enough to keep on his team.
Don’t always think you’ll find somebody better in the portal, because it could be fool’s gold.
You may have someone better sitting on your bench, so pay him instead to stay. That could have been part of the problem after last season as former designated hitter/outfielder Ashton Larson is at Texas now hitting .299 with a .478 on-base average in 27 starts. And former first baseman Ryan Costello is at Maryland with 14 home runs and 48 RBIs with a .278 average through 34 starts.
Now, until this season ends, talk is cheap. Just play.
And remember, Mississippi State just lost six straight at home in the SEC before sweeping South Carolina (20-22, 5-13 SEC) last weekend. Three of those six were to Tennessee, which lost two of three to LSU in Knoxville.
It would be just like the SEC for LSU to win two at Mississippi State this weekend, regardless of how bad things look at the moment. Who knows? Maybe Casan Evans will suddenly start pitching as he did last season, and William Schmidt will finally see the light, too. It’s a long season. Sometimes, players suddenly get better late. Sometimes players who have not played much arrive.
And then, next weekend, LSU gets to host No. 86 RPI South Carolina. The Tigers could be 11-13 or 10-14 going into the final two weekends needing to finish 13-17. It could happen.
This could all change in a couple of weeks. It’s happened before.
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