The Diamond Deck Blog

Boy oh boy where do I even begin? I don't even know what to say. I am... embarrassed, ashamed, confused, angry, and a million other emotions. I can go through stats, I can do whatever, but nothing will make this make sense. This offense is talented enough to win a College World Series, the pitching however, not so much. Honestly not even close. It's a homerun derby out there. We would be better off putting position players on the mound. They could probably get 3 outs before allowing multiple runs. As I am writing this, my brain is so scrambled thinking about what to say, because I have no words. I thought the Auburn series was a fluke and that our pitching staff wouldn't be worse than our offense is good again. But apparently I was wrong. Our pitchers gave up a combined 24 runs over 3 games, which doesn't seem so bad until you realize in game 1, we only gave up 1 run in 7 innings thanks to Paul Skenes throwing a "complete game". So if you only count games 2 an...

LSU loses their first SEC series of the year. What makes this even more painful is that it was to an unranked team. Not only that, but we got walked off on Sunday getting 10 run ruled. I had a lot going on this weekend, so I didn't get a chance to watch much of this series, but what I did notice is the pitching- or lack there of. There was none. The only pitching we had was by the same guy who has been doing it all year- Paul Skenes. If only we could give him a robotic arm and have him pitch all 9 innings every game. Our offense is great, but when you need them to score 10 or more runs a game, you're not going to win many games. With this series loss, our SEC series record is now 6-1-1, SEC record is 16-7, and overall record is 37-10.  Usually I jot down some bullet point notes on the series, but all I have to talk about is the pitching. It's MIA. We would be better off pitching position players. We had a 6.92 ERA over the weekend. This even includes Friday in which we shut...

It was so fun sweeping our "rivals" even though you can't even call it a rivalry in baseball when it's not even a series. LSU was practically in control the entire weekend except for a few moments... well every game. But the point is we won the game, every game. And we're still and will remain #1. I just wish Alabama was ranked 25 or something because I would like to believe that we would have broken the attendance record again. Imagine breaking the attendance record twice in one season.  Paul Skenes once again had a very impressive game going 6 innings, striking out 9, and only surrendering 1 run. He also didn't walk anyone. His pitch count was 109 which I would have liked to see less. It is only a matter of time before he loses velocity by the postseason and he can't lose his velocity; it's what he relies on. You expect starting pitchers to lose velocity by the end of their outing, but only by a couple MPH. Skenes is losing almost 4 MPH by the end of...

#1 ranked LSU finally gets an SEC series sweep and brings their SEC series record to 5-0-1, SEC record to 12-5, and overall record to 32-7. Dylan Crews has given evidence that he is the next coming of Christ as he went 7-for-13 slashing .538/.600/1.154 for an OPS of 1.754 this series. I would usually do the series MVP at the end of the blog, but it's pretty obvious who it is. Not that no one else did well, but Crews was just on a completely different level. In fact, there were a lot of good performances this weekend.  I'm not going give a play by play of every game this time, I just have some notes I would like to share. The first note is that are we running Paul Skenes into the ground? No matter what his line is, he is always pitching 6 innings, except for the South Carolina rain delay, which isn't a high number of innings, but in those 6 innings, he's always throwing around 100 pitches. In a full game, his pitch count has ranged from as low as 80 to as high as 117, wh...

Not only was it showering homers, but it was showering hits, walks, and runs. This was a very high scoring, offensive series for better or worse. There was a combined 58 runs in this series; 19.33 per game and 9.67 per team per game.  There was also a total of 9 home runs by both teams, LSU hitting 8 of them. Game 1 made us think that this series would be smooth sailing against the #12 team in the nation, but it was anything but that. We started RED HOT scoring 14 runs in the first 3 innings. What was crazy was that Kentucky had 1 out with a runner on and they decide to intentionally walk Dylan Crews... in the first inning! They thought it would be easier to face Tommy White I guess, which statistically they would be correct, Dylan Crews leads Tommy White in every offensive statistic. That decision came back to bite them as  Tommy White scorches a 2-RBI double to score Gavin Dugas and Crews. Now they have a runner on second and 1 out and of course Cade Beloso gets hit by pitch...

I don't have much to say about this series, so this won't be a long blog. It was a pretty anticlimactic series only playing 2 games due to weather. The weather played a bigger part in this series than just cancelling game 3; it caused game 1 to go into a weather delay which doesn't sound too impactful, but it caused our best pitcher and South Carolina's worst pitcher to hit the showers early after just 3 innings. Heading into the delay we were down 3-1 which is not an insurmountable deficit by any means. South Carolina's starter came into the game with a 5.17 ERA and 1.34 WHIP so it was only a matter of time before we starting hitting him. Alas we entered a rain delay which forced both starters out of the game making us put in Sam Dutton for some reason and South Carolina to put in James Hicks who has a sub 3.00 ERA and sub 1.00 WHIP. I'm not even sure why we put in Sam Dutton in a 2 run game, but we did and he didn't even do that bad. It was the next pitche...

Last year during the Super Regionals, Tennessee's mantra was "who's your daddy?" implying that they owned/would own anyone who got in their way during the tournament. Alas, it turned out that Notre Dame was their daddy as they took down the 1 seed Volunteers. At the time, it was hard for us to talk trash since we lost in regionals to Southern Miss, Kennesaw State, and Army. Over the weekend, LSU adopted Tennessee from Notre Dame officially becoming Tennessee's daddy, taking 2 out of 3, winning the series.  Once again, I got there too late to get a spot in the student section, so I had to go back to standing room only. I didn't even leave late, I left an hour before game time, but I sat in bumper to bumper traffic for almost 30 minutes. But you didn't even need to see the field to know what was going on; you could hear it and feel it in the stadium. Paul Skenes proved once again why he is an ace in the SEC as if he even needed to do it again. He went 7 full...

I'll be honest, after the beat down we received Friday, I thought we were going to have a long weekend ahead of us filled with heartbreak. It was anything but that. As far as Friday goes, the pitching in regulation was superb. Paul Skenes did Paul Skenes things pitching 7 full innings allowing 1 run, only his second on the year, keeping his ERA sub-1.00, and punching out a dozen Razorbacks. Chase Shores also wasn't abysmal, giving up 1 run in 2 innings of work, it was Christian Little that shocked me in extra innings. The Vandy transfer was tagged with 4 earned runs only recording a single out. And then Will Hellmers gives up 3 over 0.2. But it should not have even gotten to this point. In regulation, LSU had more than twice as many hits than Arkansas, but only had a single run to show for it. Two base running mistakes and a lot of bad hitting with runners on cursed LSU. The worst base running mistake was made by the third base coach hesitantly send Tre Morgan home on a wild pi...

If I never see another Auburn gymnast in my life, including, but not limited to, Suni Lee, I will die a happy man. I know she's good, but her bars performance was not a 10; a 9.950 maybe, but was I impressed? Not really. And as far as the rest of them, a bunch of obnoxious asses I've ever had the misfortune of seeing in person. During every one of our beam routines, they had to chant so loudly. Absolutely no respect in our own house. We didn't do that during their beam routines although we should have. And one more thing before I get into the analysis of the meet- why were we cheering for not only Suni Lee, but every Auburn gymnast? I get that Suni competed for the United States in the summer Olympics, but who the hell are the rest of them and why were we cheering for them? They even cheered for Suni when she got a 10. SHE IS THE ENEMY. Let's cheer for Alabama during football season while we're at it. It doesn't matter anyway, we won and scored twice as many 10s...

LSU gymnastics is finally back after a two week hiatus and despite not having as high of a score from week 1, they still did pretty well considering how rusty they are. LSU was able to sneak past Georgia with a score of 196.850-196.100, down 0.100 from week 1. I fully expect them to back to full strength next week against Auburn.  First up on vault, everyone on vault did exceptionally well. Rachel Baumann of Georgia scored a vault high of 9.950 while the lowest score was Alyona Shchennikova with a 9.575, which got dropped anyway, so no harm, no foul. Georgia beat us in vault by a score of 49.325-49.150; definitely not our best. Next up on bars, LSU did pretty well against the competition, owning the top three scores- all 9.900s; and Georgia owning the the bottom two scores- a 9.725 and a 8.975.  Now getting into the interesting events- beam and floor. As you read in the title, Aleah Finnegan came out and showed up in her first intersquad meet with a 9.875. It may not have been...

The bunch of idiots over at West Virginia have covid so they had to withdraw from the meet forcing LSU to find another worthy competitor. They couldn't find one so they just got Centenary. From the beginning you could tell they were the island of misfit toys of women's collegiate gymnastics. The good news is, it doesn't matter who you compete against, all that matters is your own average.  A couple notable events from introductions are Haleigh Bryant got her name in the rafters as he was the 2021 vaulting champion. Also Aleah Finnegan and Kamryn Ryan were M.I.A. and though they didn't make an announcement, one can only assume they either have covid or were exposed to someone with covid, but I do not want to make any assumptions. In the first rotation, no surprise Haleigh Bryant lead LSU with a score of 9.925 contributing to a team score of 49.400. On the other hand, the Centenary Ladies on managed a score of 47.350 with one of their gymnasts falling on her ass like a si...

Since I did not go to the UNO scrimmages, for all intents and purposes, those will not count. I also couldn't go to the second ULL scrimmage, so only 25% of the Fall scrimmages counts. LSU was able to power their way past ULL with a final score of 8-6 after 8 innings in the noon scrimmage. My first takeaway is that Tre Morgan is way too good at 1st base to change positions. In high school Tre Morgan also played outfield and some people are saying that he doesn't have the right body type of a 1st basemen. Those people are wrong. So Tre may not be 6'5 225 lbs, but can play the position better than anyone else and I wouldn't sacrifice putting him in the outfield just because he may be smaller than the average 1st baseman.  Next is that our catcher problem is gone. Last year Hayden Travinski got injured and LSU scrambled to split time among Doughty, Wyeth, and eventually landed on Alex Milazzo. Milazzo may be a good defensive catcher, but all three were liabilities at the p...

Let me preface this blog with saying that as a biased Red Sox fan, this year's draft sucked. Not only did the Rangers take Jack Leiter at number 2 so we couldn't get him, but they also didn't take Kumar at 4. They did take the highest ranked prospect in this year's draft, high school shortstop Marcelo Mayer, so I can't be all that mad, but I would have liked for them to take a household name like Leiter or Kumar in the first round.  Jaden Hill was ranked number 36 in this year's draft and the Red Sox had the number 40 pick for the second round, so I had high hopes that they would finally take a pitcher. Long story short, they didn't; they took Florida outfielder Jud Fabian, again, not a bad pick, but not my favorite. Instead of going to the Red Sox, Hill went to my favorite National League team, the Colorado Rockies at 44 in the second round. At first glance, this is a good pick for me since I like the Rockies, but since he's a pitcher, he now has to dea...

Giving up 6 homeruns is not ideal; hitting 4 is though. Our pitching was just in no mood to go to Omaha. It seemed like no matter what we did, what we threw, Tennessee was just clobbering it over the wall. Our 3 errors certainly didn't help. Our offense was average or even above average. If we could have just pitched a decent game and held them to 5 runs, we would have won and played an elimination game Monday. Paul just wanted one more screw you before he retires. Pulling Marceaux wasn't ideal. He did give up 3 runs over 3 innings however only 2 were earned due to the error in the 1st inning that came to score on the homerun. Paul then puts in Garrett Edwards, which I wasn't completely in disagreement with. There was probably someone better, but anyway, Edwards gives up a 2 run bomb and only records one out. Hellmers comes in to clean up the inning although he did more damage than Edwards did. He gave up 4 runs over 0.2 innings. Shockingly, Jacob Hasty was the first pitche...

Ma'khail Hilliard was cruising through 5 innings only giving up 3 hits, no walks, 6 strikeouts, and only 1 earned run. He's thrown more pitches than what he's thrown today- 76. He could have gone at least one more inning. So who does Paul put in? Surely an experienced upperclassman in this high pressure situation only up one single run. No. Of course not; why would Paul do such a foolhardy thing? It's not like they had almost a week's rest for this exact moment. He puts in freshman Javen Coleman. Even though Coleman had some success last weekend, this is not last weekend. Not only did he give up the 1 run lead and tie the game, but he gave Tennessee the lead and then some. And I'm sure he only let him out there for one inning. Well not exactly; he let him stay out there for 3 innings. After his disastrous first inning walking 3 batters and loading the bases twice, Paul thought it would be a great idea to leave him out there. Maybe he would find his rhythm. Paul,...

The rotation now has just under a week to rest and regather which opens the question does the rotation change for this upcoming series against Tennessee? And if so, how? Let's not forget that Tennessee swept a 3 game weekend series against LSU and as much as I would love to forget that series, we just can't. So let's look at how our starters fanned in that series: In game 1, Landon Marceaux went 5.0 innings. Over those 5 innings, he gave up 3 hits, 3 walks, hit a batter, and allowed 2 runs, only 1 earned however, striking out 9 batters. He had a 1.80 game ERA, a 1.20 WHIP, a 16.20 K/9, and a 3.00 K/BB.  In game 2, this gets a little tricky because it was Jaden Hill who is now injured. But Ma'Khail Hilliard went after him for 3.0 innings and over those 3 innings, he gave up 2 hits, a walk, hit a batter, gave up an earned run and struck out 3. He had a 3.00 game ERA, a 1.00 WHIP, a 9.00 K/9, and a 3.00 K/BB.  In game 3 was AJ Labas. Labas went 7.0 innings. He gave up 4 hi...

In what was a rollercoaster of a baseball game, LSU's offense did not give up. After every pitching blunder, the offense went back out there and just flat out mashed. Gavin Dugas homered his first two at bats and you would think that was enough. No. It seemed as if after every run LSU scored, the pitchers were like "actually, I don't want to win". It seemed like they had money on Oregon or something. I don't even know who to give the player of the game to, they were all just so great. ESPN gave it to Drew Bianco for his 2 run shot, which isn't a wrong answer. Bianco, Beloso, Dugas, Thompson, even Marceaux for closing out the game when Oregon just wasn't quitting. What is shocking though is that Crews who was red hot coming into today didn't get on base once and struck out twice. I guess he was bound to come down to Earth eventually, you can't be god forever. But it was the balk that really pushed us over the edge. The balk gave us the lead and then...

You could have probably put anyone's name in the title and it would have made just as much sense. The offense was just clicking today, even the pitching. But I had to give it to Crews. He went 6-for-8 with a walk and not a single strikeout. Over the course of the day, he amassed 2 doubles and a homerun. On the weekend as a whole, get ready for this, he is slashing .625/.667/1.438, this would bring his OPS to a whopping 2.105. Not only does this mean he is getting a hit in more than half his at bats, but it also means he is getting on base 2/3 of his plate plate appearances. The dude is putting up video game numbers in regionals. Like I said earlier, is Dylan Crews god, I would say yes.  An honorable mention goes to Gavin Dugas for going 4-for-5 with a double, 2 triples, a homerun, 2 walks and only 1 strikeout. He was a single away from hitting for the cycle over the course of the day, but alas, he just had too much power.  We still have more work to do. One more game against O...

God is good

Before we get into the dominant outing by Hilliard, we need to talk about the 3rd inning where LSU blasted not one, not two, but three ding dongs to solidify yet another SEC series win. With this win today, LSU now has 13 wins over SEC teams and has also won 5 of their last 7 SEC series.  Now let’s talk about Ma’khail Hillard. This wasn’t just a good outing by Hillard. It was a very impressive outing especially from someone who didn’t even start for the first half of the year and is suddenly starting the weekend finales. I told myself all I wanted out of him was 6 innings without allowing more than 3 earned runs to record a quality start and give our offense a good chance of winning. Well he did much more than that. He had a no hitter through the first time though the lineup. Only one batter reached base and that was on an error by Thompson. His final stat line read 7.0 innings pitched, 6 hits, 0 walks, 2 earned runs, 2 strikeouts, and most importantly the win to better his record ...

I'll be honest, after LSU lost the lead and was down 2-6, I kinda just gave up. I was disappointed, angry, sad, you name it. I thought it was over. But then I decided to turn it back on in the top of the 5th inning and Doughty said he had enough of this "losing" and promptly tied the game with one swing of the bat. However, it doesn't end there. Not even close. The story continues for 7 more scoreless innings. Finally, after loading the bases, Zach Arnold, yes, that Zach Arnold also said he had enough of this silliness and rips a bullet to drive in a pair runs and take the lead 8-6. And if that weren't enough, Cade Doughty doesn't think that's enough to win (I know, what confidence in his bullpen), so he unleashes a hit to drive in even more runs. LSU eventually takes a 12-6 lead over Texas A&M by the end of the inning and they just weren't having fun anymore. With that loss, their season is basically over as they are eliminated from the SEC Tourna...

Have I mentioned how much I hate Paul? Well I do. He takes Landon out of the game after only 4 innings allowing 3 hits, 3 walks, and 1 unearned run with only about 60 pitches thrown. So who does he put in? Someone with a sub 4.00 ERA surely. Not exactly. He puts in Javen Coleman with a 7.32 ERA entering the game. He was able to lower his ERA to sub 7.00, but good ole Paul leaves him in just a bit too long. How long you ask? The same number of innings as Landon, the ace with a 2.15 ERA. Coleman was good for a while, but all good things must come to an end as he allows a homerun in the bottom of the 8th to give the Aggies the lead. And I'm not blaming Coleman. It wasn't his call to stay in the game for 4 innings when there are a bunch of other guys in the bullpen with lower ERAs. To name a few: Michael Fowler- 6.60, Trent Vietmeier- 4.85, Ty Floyd- 4.82, Jacob Hasty- 4.50, Devin Fontenot- 3.58, Garrett Edwards- 3.41, Theo Millas- 3.00. There was NO POINT in leaving him that long....

Since it was raining today and projected to rain all game, I decided to buy a ticket in the gold grandstands. After a few innings, I noticed that there were some empty seats in the premium section down below that is shown on TV, so I decide to move down for a couple innings. There I was able to call strike 3 on 3 different occasions thanks to Trent Vietmeier. And before you say anything, yes, I know you don't call strike 3 swinging, but unfortunately, Northwestern weren't taking any pitches in the strike zone, especially on strike 3.  The Tigers were able to rally a bit in the 7th inning down 6 on a error and a 2 run triple by Crews, but alas, the Demons score in the 9th and that was just too much to handle for the Tigers. So they won't finish the season 5-0 like I had hoped, but they still have a chance to get into the SEC Tournament. They are currently 3.0 games ahead of Auburn and Texas A&M who they will face this weekend, and if they can just win one of those games ...

According to a reliable source, the mother of Dylan Crews has a rather large bosom. That source? The father of Dylan Crews. I thought it was just some creep in the student section yelling that at the right fielder, but no, it was indeed his dad. I still find it strange to yell that at your son about his mom.  In other news, LSU takes the series from Bama 2-1 outscoring them 20-12. We could have really used a sweep, but a series win will have to do. The Tigers take on Northwestern State on Tuesday and finish up the regular season this weekend against Texas A&M. Can we please just end the season 5-0? P.S. I have one foot on board the Ma'Khail Hilliard train. I want to see one more dominant start by him to be fully on board, but I'm confident. 

Ever since Jaden Hill went to the injured list, Landon Marceaux has been the ace for the LSU Tigers rotation and he has not disappointed. In SEC play, Marceaux is pitching a 3.02 ERA, which isn't bad considering the immense talent inside the SEC, but overall, he is pitching a 2.15 ERA, which is better than, you guessed it, Kumar Rocker, the ace for Vanderbilt. Kumar has a 3.35 ERA in SEC play, and a 2.31 ERA overall.  So this begs the question, why is Kumar getting all the praise and attention when Landon Marceaux is doing everything Kumar has done and more? I'm not saying Kumar is bad, I would be a fool to say that, but stats don't lie, Landon is having a better year. Kumar is always a 1st round draft pick in this year's MLB draft, but I can't remember seeing Landon once. Landon is the one with a better ERA and a better K/BB with a 6.06 compared to Kumar's 4.58.  You can't use the argument that Kumar faces harder teams, they're in the same conference, w...

I swear to God, if I see the "The Paul Mainieri Show is live..." notification on my LSU Sports app one more time, I think I might apply for the head coaching job next year. I don't think his biggest concern is going live from TJ Ribs (no free ads). His biggest concern should be the atrocious bullpen. The bullpen has talent. Paul just doesn't know how to utilize them.  During a weekend game against Kentucky, Paul was forced to use an opener, and he chose Blake Money, a reliable reliever. But that is all he is- a reliever. He is not a starter. So why would Paul leave him in for 4 innings? During those 4 innings, he have up 5 earned runs. I'm not saying Money is a bad pitcher, he isn't. What I am saying is that Money is a reliever who is used to th rowing an inning or two. His arm is used to throwing 4 consecutive innings of work. If you wanted to use the argument that Paul is trying to save his bullpen arms, that is simply not true. Paul will put in a good reliv...