BATON ROUGE — Before beginning his 18th and final season as LSU baseball head coach, Skip Bertman spoke at Baseball Media Day on Tuesday afternoon about his past, present and future sitution at LSU.
QUOTES FROM LSU HEAD BASEBALL COACH SKIP BERTMAN ON MEDIA DAY- FEB. 6
“This year we’ve got an abundance of accolades. We were picked number three or number two and I don’t know why. Most of the kids graduated, and we lost 22 guys to the professional baseball draft. The first four pitchers were amongst those that left, and the top RBI and homerun man in America. Those are tough numbers to replace. On the other hand there are a lot of talented kids out there. Here today is Friday’s starter Jason Scobie, Saturday’s pitcher Shane Youman, and Ray Wright who will be in rightfield. Wally Pontiff will be at third and also here is our closer, Weylin Guidry. We asked a few other guys to be here today, but they had class at this time. We couldn’t get Theriot or Fontenot here. Speaking of Fontenot, he has not played yet because he had a hammate removed in his right hand. He is okay to start swinging now. It will just take some time to get Fontenot back. At first base there is a big battle between Zeph Zinsman and Brian Moore. Matt Heath is a transfer from the University of Florida who won the catching job. He is okay, but has a bruised wrist right now. At third base we have Wally (Pontiff) and Trae Duncan, who is a good player. In leftfield we have Todd Linden who is a transfer from the University of Washington. He comes as advertised. Dave Raymer is in center and we mentioned Ray Wright in rightfield. Johnnie Thibodeaux will be the DH. Aaron Hill will play at second and he is the number two prospect in Baseball America. He is real good and turned down a lot of money to come here. Pitching wise we mentioned Jason, Shane and Weylin. Lane Mestepey is a good freshman. Brad David is a good sophomore. Billy Brian is a good pitcher but has had some arm problems. Naturally though he is still a top pitcher. Justin Hill is also a good pitcher. We can build around those guys but lost a lot of leadership. We lost Blair Barbier, Brad Cresse, Cedrick Harris, Jeremy Witten and others. We lost some good senior pitchers as well. Naturally we hope to do real well and jump out to a good start and compete well.