By GLENN GUILBEAU, Tiger Rag Editor
LSU pitcher Gavin Guidry could give up a grand slam home run in the ninth inning this weekend in Jacksonville, Florida, and he will not suffer as much pain and frustration as he did for most of last year.
A redshirt junior relief ace from Barbe High in Lake Charles who missed all of 2025 with a back injury, Guidry is back stronger and faster than ever and, as important, he is reborn in his athletic soul.
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“I was always competitive,” Guidry said after striking out five of seven batters over the last two and a third innings for the save Monday over Kent State in a 10-7 win at Alex Box Stadium. “But I would say now, it comes from a different place.”
And Guidry, who is 1-0 with one save and a 0.00 ERA with 10 strikeouts, 0 runs, 1 hit and 0 walks in four and a third innings this season, may get the call in the late innings Friday when the No. 1 Tigers (5-0) play Indiana (1-3) in the Jax College Baseball Classic in Jacksonville, Florida (1 p.m., D1Baseball.com online).
“I get to play a game that got taken away from me last year,” he said. “Being able to compete is amazing. The last 12 months, I’ve just put so much work in to get back on the field that I just feel like whenever I go out there, I’m so content with however it unfolds. If I throw good, cool. If I don’t – it is what it is, because I did everything I possibly could do to put myself in a situation to succeed. I can live with it. I can look myself in the mirror and know there wasn’t anything else that I could do.”
The tournament continues when the Tigers play Notre Dame (2-1) on Saturday (11 a.m., D1Baseball.com) and Central Florida (3-1) on Sunday (2 p.m., D1Baseball.com).
Just before last season began in February, Guidry was sidelined with what he and team doctors thought was a minor back injury. But he never got better, and after finally getting the right diagnosis, he had surgery last April for a herniated disc at the fourth and fifth vertebrae.
And LSU coach Jay Johnson was without his best returning reliever all season as Guidry went 2-0 with three saves and a 2.59 ERA with 36 strikeouts in 24 and a third innings in 2024. In LSU’s national championship season in 2023 as a freshman, he went 3-0 with three saves and a 3.77 ERA with 42 strikeouts in 28 and two-thirds innings.
“I feel like Gavin is the best closer in the country,” Johnson said Monday after watching Guidry throw 33 pitches, mixing his killer slider with a changeup and cutter for 24 strikes.
“And what’s remarkable,” Johnson said, “is that we won the 2025 national championship last season while he was out with an injury. We are very grateful he’s back on the mound, obviously.”
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So are LSU fans, who gave him a thunderous ovation Friday afternoon in the season opener at Alex Box as he jogged to the mound with a man on and nobody out in the seventh inning, trailing Milwaukee, 5-4. It was his first time pitching in the Box since May 18, 2024, when he entered in the ninth to get a pop out and then a strikeout of Will Furniss to finish a 9-3 win over Ole Miss.
“That was really cool,” Guidry said of the cheers. “Yeah, that was awesome. Just running out of the gates and hearing them excited to see me and just how excited I was back out there was really awesome. It meant a lot. Really hard to put into words, being a Louisiana kid coming to school here and then having to sit back and watch the guys do it last year. And then feeling like it’s my turn to compete again and do what I do.”
And he picked up where he left off, striking out the side in the seventh and fanning five of the seven batters faced with one hit and no runs allowed for the win in a 15-5 victory.
Guidry had been visualizing such a scenario for about 68 games of the Tigers’ 58-13 season in 2025.
“Pretty much every single game last year,” he said. “Just putting myself in those guys’ shoes mentally to make sure I didn’t lose a step.”
He had also been in agony and just flat frustrated most of the time. His arm hurt. Then it got better, then hurt again. He couldn’t recover. And he still doesn’t know how he hurt it. He thinks it could have stemmed from high school when he had some back pain.
“I wish I knew to be completely honest,” he said. “You know as much as I know. It was the weirdest thing I ever had to deal with in my entire life. Because there’d be some days where I’d wake up, and I was like, ‘OK, we’re starting to get some things going and starting to figure it out, like I’m going to pitch this year.’ And then three days later, I couldn’t sleep because I was in so much pain.”
Diagnosis came and went. Treatments came and went.
“We tried everything we possibly could,” he said. “Then we got to the breaking point where we just had to make sure I didn’t mess something up – not only for just baseball, but for my life. Back pain is not something you want to deal with or mess with. I had to make a decision for myself to make sure I got to live a normal life, even if the baseball thing didn’t work out.”
The decision was made for the surgery, and at first he felt better afterwards.
“And then I started hurting again,” he said. “The scar tissue messed me up, because I started feeling better, then bad again. Then I thought something went wrong with the surgery, that something happened. I had conversations with my parents about not playing again, because we didn’t really know where it was going to go and how everything was going to look. So, I just had to put my head down and work and see where it got me. And if it didn’t work out, to just be content with the work that I put in.”
Doctors told Guidry and Johnson that Guidry was going to feel like it wasn’t going to work out, but things might suddenly just click.
“And that’s pretty much how it went,” Guidry said. “I feel like my body’s in a better place now than it’s ever been in my whole life. My arm’s been recovering real well in between outings. My body’s moving easier, and I’m throwing a little bit harder because of it.”
He feels better than ever and more prepared to pitch than ever.
“That’s what ultimate freedom is on the mound or in any sport is,” he said. “If you feel you are fully prepared, and there’s nothing else you could’ve done to prepare yourself. Then, you can just go out there and compete. That’s the fun part, being in front of 10,000 people. That’s why we do what we do. Nobody sees the struggle. It feels really good just to get out there and compete again. Really just a lot of gratitude.”
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