By GLENN GUILBEAU, Tiger Rag Editor
LSU pitching coach Nate Yeskie is not used to dealing with a lot of adversity the way he has had to this season.
Yeskie, who is in his third season with the Tigers, is the only active coach in the country to go to the College World Series with four programs – Oregon State in 2013, ’17 and ’18, Arizona in 2021, Texas A&M in 2022 and LSU in 2025. He has also been pitching coach on two national championship teams – LSU last year and Oregon State in 2018.
“It was a clinic. It was good. It’s been good for a couple weeks now.”
— Glenn Guilbeau (@SportBeatTweet) May 6, 2026
-Jay Johnson on suddenly 5-0 Tigers:https://t.co/8OHRCZZxCv
None of those teams had a season like LSU’s pitchers have had this year. Tiger pitchers still lead the Southeastern Conference in wild pitches with a school record 77 and in walks with 236 while checking in at 13th out of 16 teams in earned run average at 5.05.
“Well, it’s baseball,” Yeskie said on Tiger Rag Radio Tuesday night, echoing one of his favorite coaches – former LSU five-time national champion coach and always-pitching coach Skip Bertman.
“If you haven’t gone through some tough times, you probably hadn’t been the game long enough,” Yeskie said. “If you’re expecting it to be sunshine and rainbows every day, that’s not the reality.”
It’s a simple game, Yeskie explained.
“You have to pitch. You have to defend. You have to get timely hits. And you have to run the bases aggressively and intelligently,” he said.
Too many times and for too long stretches of games, preseason No. 1 LSU, which hasn’t been ranked in a month, has not done any of those things well. This is why the Tigers find themselves at 29-21 on the season and 9-15 in the Southeastern Conference and in danger of not reaching NCAA postseason play for the first time since 2011. LSU plays at No. 5 Georgia (38-11, 18-6 SEC) on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
“If you can do those four, you’re going to be in every ballgame and win a majority of those,” Yeskie said. “When you start taking any one of those off the list, and free bases start to elevate, and you don’t get a timely hit or you don’t make a play to close out an inning, and you can throw those things out of whack.”
LSU has started to calm the whack down over the last week as it has won five in a row overall and three straight in the SEC after setting a school record with nine straight league losses.
“We’ve been on the cusp of some things,” Yeskie said. “We’re starting to improve.”
And just in time. The Tigers end the regular season a week from this weekend at home against No. 21 Florida (32-17, 13-11 SEC).
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