The Diamond Deck Blog

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...