By David Steinle
Special to LSUsports.net
Following LSU’s loss at Long Beach St. on March, the Fighting Tiger baseball team found themselves in a position they hadn’t been in since 1981 — staring a losing record in the month of March dead in the face.
The Tigers were 6-6 after being outscored 17-2 in the first two games in California, and the doubters were out in full force as the Tigers’ promising 4-0 start had crumbled into six losses in an eight-game stretch, including a three-game sweep by Kansas in Baton Rouge and two one-sided losses to the 49ers.
With the calendar about to flip from March to April, that rough start has been left in the dust, much in the same manner that most LSU opponents have been left behind during the Tigers’ current upswing, a 13-game stretch that has taken the Tigers to 16-8-1 overall, but more importantly, into sole possession of first place in the Southeastern Conference, a lofty perch that the Tigers did not get a view from in all of the 2002 season.
Again, the rugged non-conference schedule that is a staple of LSU baseball in the Skip Bertman–Smoke Laval era has yielded its usual bountiful harvest.
Nobody expected LSU to get swept by Kansas, mind you, but outside of the Jayhawks getting swept at Missouri last weekend, KU has proven to be a much better team than anyone gave it credit for being.
There is certainly no shame in the other five losses on the Tigers’ docket, either. Houston will overcome its slow start to finish at or near the top of Conference USA, the Tulane-LSU rivalry is the gold standard for all in-state college baseball rivalries, and UNO is too good of a program to lose as many games in a row as it did to the Tigers.
Therefore, with the exception of Auburn, who has faced Atlantic Coast Conference powers Clemson, North Carolina and Georgia Tech early this season, no other SEC team has been battle hardened like the Bayou Bengals, and the fruits of those labors were a 2-0-1 weekend against a Florida team that came in to Baton Rouge batting a league high .356, and now a three-game sweep at Georgia, the Tigers’ first road sweep in nearly two years.
This may be the Tigers’ most impressive early season run since the 1997 team started out 19-0, given the circumstances that have befallen Laval’s second LSU team.
Of course, most thought going in that Lane Mestepey would not be available, as the two-time All-SEC selection had to undergo major shoulder surgery after last year’s super regional. But the injury bug continues to bite the Tigers and bite quite hard.
Some injuries, like the fall injuries to newcomers Collin Smith and Clay Dirks, were able to be overcome. But the recent wave of injuries — a torn ACL for backup first baseman Eric Wiethorn, two shoulder injuries for starting catcher Dustin Weaver, and a sore rotator cuff for closer Brandon Nall — have sapped LSU’s depth, and turned this year’s baseball team into a possible carbon copy of Sue Gunter‘s 2002 women’s basketball team, an immensely talented starting lineup with precious little depth.
So what can account for the Tigers’ sudden upturn in fortunes? The reasons are many, but a few in particular stand out.
The first is the return of Bo Pettit to the starting rotation. Without Mestepey, it falls to the Tigers’ other experienced arms in Jake Tompkins, Brian Wilson and Pettit to step their games up. When Pettit missed the Tigers’ first two weekend series against Northwestern State and Kansas with a case of the flu, something seemed to be missing. Pettit, who keeps coming back from the kind of injuries that force many hurlers to give the game up, seemed to rally his teammates behind him late last year much the same way that Mestepey did.
Therefore, it’s no surprise that LSU has won all four games that the Houston native has started in March. Pettit is 4-0 with a solid 2.32 ERA heading into his scheduled start this weekend at Alabama. Pettit may not look pretty at times, but he will battle every inch of the way, and his never-say-die attitude seems to have rubbed off on his teammates.
Not that the other LSU pitchers have been bad, mind you. Wilson fired a five-hit shutout at Florida in the SEC opener and is 5-2, Justin Meier has filled the bill quite nicely as the mid-week starter, and the bullpen has managed quite well with Billy Sadler, Greg Smith, Jason Determann and Jordan Faircloth all filling in the void left by Nall’s absence.
Tompkins has been the one missing link in this puzzle, going 0-3 with a 4.79 ERA so far this year. But Tompkins is a resilient sort who isn’t going to let this affect him; he’ll keep competing, and eventually, things will turn around. In the meantime, Nate Bumstead will do just fine as the third weekend starter, if his eight inning, eight strikeout performance at Georgia on Sunday is any indication.
Another key sparking the LSU upturn is the hot bat of Aaron Hill. The junior began the season at third base trying to fill the shoes of the late Wally Pontiff, then was forced back to shortstop when Matt Horwath came up with a shoulder injury. The position shifts, plus maybe a little hangover from playing with the U.S. national team last summer in Italy, contributed to a slow start that saw Hill’s batting average dip to an uncharacteristic .268.
Hill is well on his way to All-America honors and a high status in June’s amateur draft. Hill has hit safely in his last 13 games to raise his season batting average by a staggering 100 points to .368, the best mark on the team. As a mark of his leadership and consistency, Hill has started every game, leads the Tigers in nine offensive categories, and has fanned just six times in 115 plate appearances.
Hill’s defense at times has been criticized, but most of the errors Hill makes is because he will try to make the big play that many other shortstops would shy away from. But down the road, the feeling is there that Hill will one day make the big play at the critical moment.
Outside of Hill, the biggest bat in the Tiger lineup has been that of Clay Harris. The sophomore from Slidell had early season shoulder soreness that has prevented him from pitching more than the 2 2/3 innings he threw on opening weekend, but Harris was also not getting his opportunities at the plate, making a meager one plate appearance (a walk at Centenary) in the season’s first 12 games.
Figuring he had nothing to lose but one more non-conference game in California, Laval inserted Harris, whose younger brother, Will, was starting at first base at the time, into the lineup at third base to give Blake Gill a day off and move Ivan Naccarata back to second.
If Laval had played this gambit at the craps table in Las Vegas, he would be one rich man. Clay Harris is batting a sterling .383 since he became a full-time starter, bashing three home runs and driving in 15 runs.
Along with the steady play of Naccarata, the resurgence of Gill and the emergence of newcomers Bruce Sprowl, Ryan Patterson and Matt Liuzza, LSU may be on its way to rediscovering the Bayou Bomber days of the late 1990s.
Florida and Georgia would certainly agree the tag “Bayou Bombers” is appropriate. In six SEC games this year, LSU is batting .360 and has scored 48 runs and pounded out 82 hits, scoring eight or more runs four times. When you can score runs in bunches as LSU has (six in the first inning last Friday at Georgia, plus a five-run second and a seven-run sixth on Saturday), the other team is going to be feeling very, very demoralized.
Getting to the top was the easier part (relatively speaking, of course); staying there will be difficult, as the Tigers are well aware. First up is a trip to Tuscaloosa to face an Alabama team that is hungry for a win over LSU after eight straight setbacks, including three-game sweeps in each of the last two years. The 2001 sweep in Tuscaloosa was an ugly affair that was famous for a bench clearing incident and an appeal play in the second game, but the 2002 whitewash by LSU was more devastating for Alabama, because it cost the Tide the SEC championship.
Should LSU be able to come away from Sewell-Thomas Stadium with two victories, it may not be in the SEC lead any longer, but LSU can’t control what goes on elsewhere. What it will do is set LSU up quite nicely for a great April run, because the Tigers play nine of 12 league games at home, and the road trip is to Vanderbilt, a team that LSU has handled in most years (emphasis on most, because the Commodores did win twice last year in Baton Rouge).
Of the home games, South Carolina is off to a 1-5 league start. Ole Miss is 5-1, but has done it against a schedule has been softer than a marshmallow, while Tennessee has been a team LSU has dominated, especially at The Box.
A good weekend at Alabama and a strong April will give the Tigers some breathing room, especially with land mines that await in May: a trip to Starkville to face a pitching-rich Mississippi St. club, a home series with an Auburn team that has been ranked first in all of the early RPI models, and a season ending trip to Fayetteville, where Arkansas has dominated the Tigers in recent years much as LSU has owned the Razorbacks on the bayou.
But a series loss in Tuscaloosa, barring three repeats of the 28-2 disaster in 1997, will only be a temporary speed bump, not a road block. LSU is built for the long haul, and a May without the Tigers contending for a championship doesn’t seem right.