Pitching?

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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 them out thanks to Paul Skenes going 7.1 innings and Nate Ackenhausen finishing the 8th. If you just include Saturday and Sunday, we had a 10.59 ERA. That is unacceptable, especially to an unranked team. I usually end each blog with saying that I expect to remain #1, but that's always been after a series win. I don't expect to remain #1. If we lost a series to a #5-10 team, who couldn't pass us up, I would say we should be fine keep that 1 spot. This series has straight up sucked the life out of me. I really don't have anymore commentary; I'll just list some stats that shouldn't make you feel any better about our pitching (these only include active pitchers, so no Garrett Edwards or Chase Shores who are both out for the season with injury). 

Pitching ERA: 4.69
Rotation ERA: 3.50
Rotation ERA without Skenes: 4.89
Bullpen ERA: 5.66
Bullpen ERA without Nate Ackenhausen: 5.99

Here's a breakdown of how many pitchers fit into each category:

Pitchers with a sub-2.00 ERA: 1 (Paul Skenes)
Pitchers with an ERA between 2.00 and 2.99: 1 (Nate Ackenhausen)
Pitchers with an ERA between 3.00 and 4.50: 3 (Gavin Guidry, Christian Little, Griffin Herring)
Pitchers with an ERA between 4.51 and 4.99: 1 (Ty Floyd)
Pitcher with an ERA above 5.00: 8 (everyone else)

We have more pitcher with an ERA above 5.00 than below 5.00; these stats may get you by non-SEC teams, but this won't get you very far in the SEC tournament. This may even get us past Regionals depending on who we play and if we get home field advantage, but come Super Regionals, we're doomed. We HAVE to figure something out if we want to win the College World Series. And this isn't an overreaction to just one series, this is a proper reaction to a season worth of pitchers absolutely sucking. 

LSU will come home to play Northwestern on Tuesday at 6:30 and stay home to play unranked Mississippi State starting Friday at 7:30. We'll probably drop to #2. We have a chance to reclaim the #1 spot, but we need to win out the rest of the season. After Mississippi State, we play a midweek game against McNeese and then finish the season against unranked Georgia. There is no reason we shouldn't finish the season 8-0; and if we do, we should be fine. 
Dayne is a senior psychology major at Louisiana State University. He is originally from New Orleans and attended high school at Holy Cross. Other teams he likes are the Red Sox, Saints, Patriots, Bruins, Pelicans, and Celtics. He also has a career .500 batting average.

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