It is Officially Time to Panic


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 and 3, we gave up 23 in 2 games (19 innings), which comes out to a whopping 10.89 ERA. What. the. actual. hell. For reference, a quality start ERA is 4.50, so this is about double that. How are you this bad? How can you pitch for an SEC team and be this bad? How did you make the team? How did you even play for high school? A high school sophomore could probably pitch better than half these talentless hacks. Here's a list of these talentless hacks:

Micah Bucknam- 11.57 ERA
Will Hellmers- 9.00 ERA
Bryce Collins- 7.47 ERA (gave up 2 earned runs, recorded 2 outs)
Thatcher Hurd- 7.07 ERA (gave up 5 earned runs, did not record a single out)
Christian Little- 6.96 ERA (gave up 4 earned runs, recorded 1 out)
Javen Coleman- 6.00 ERA
Riley Cooper- 5.93 ERA
Sam Dutton- 5.87 ERA
Blake Money- 5.14 ERA
Ty Floyd- 4.53 ERA
Gavin Guidry (new addition)- 4.60 ERA (gave up 3 earned runs, recorded 2 outs)

Here's a list of non-talentless hacks:

Paul Skenes- 1.70 ERA
Nate Ackenhausen- 2.65 ERA
Griffin Herring (questionable)- 4.36 ERA

That's it. That's the list. 

I don't even want to do a game by game analysis. I can sum up the series in one sentence- LSU offense went off, but was no match for LSU pitching sans Paul Skenes. People are blaming Jay Johnson for losing. How?! What more do you expect Jay to do? This isn't poor bullpen managing, who else are you going to? Instead of the guy with the 7 ERA, you go to the guy with the 6 ERA? He can't help that they have no talent. What else do you expect him to do? Go out there and pitch himself? It would probably be better. Surprisingly, Ty Floyd was actually pretty good on Saturday, but due to recent history, he is still on the talentless hack list. He went 6.0 innings and only allowed a single ER striking out 10. So it is actually pretty unfair that I used his picture in such a negative blog. It's weird that Ty Floyd had a good start and Dylan Crews is still in his slump. He actually may have gotten out of his slump on Sunday though. On Friday and Saturday, he went 0 for 7 with 2 strikeouts and 3 walks. But on Sunday he went 3 for 4 with 2 walks and only 1 strikeout, so hopefully he picks up where he left off. 

I think Garrett Edwards post surgery would actually be better than a healthy [insert pitcher here]. I'm no longer confident this team can win the 2023 College World Series. I was two weeks ago, but back to back series losses to unranked teams will really deflate your confidence. You can't win a CWS with 2 or 3 good pitchers, especially when only 1 of them is a starter. We came into this series ranked #2 in the nation and I'm not completely sure we'll still be top 10 come Monday. Do we get a first round bye in the SEC Tournament? Do we host Super Regionals? Do we even host a Regionals? The future of the LSU Tigers is so up in the air right now it's not even funny. Pitching has to have some kind of turnaround fast, but how? How do we make them go from having no talent to being legitimate bullpen arms? If they don't have talent, they don't have talent. The silver lining is we haven't gotten swept yet this year. I don't even know what else to say that I haven't already said, so I'll just end the blog. 

LSU will stay in Baton Rouge to face McNeese in their last home game of the year and then travel to Athens, Georgia to face unranked Georgia to close out the regular season. For the love of God, they need to finish the regular season 4-0. Not only that, but blow out their opponents like 15-0 every game. At this point all we can do is pray. 

Amen. 

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