Jay Johnson analyzes state of LSU's pitching staff

Head coach Jay Johnson has led the LSU Tigers to the Super Regionals in just his second season as the team’s head coach. As he knows, a key piece of the team’s success is the pitching staff.

Ahead of that Super Regional, Johnson broke down the team’s pitching staff when he was asked if he got the perfect scenario for the group.

“Yes and no, because if it was perfect, Chase Shores, Garrett Edwards, Grant Taylor, Jaden Noot would be out there,” Jay Johnson said. “These guys are Major Leaguers. I think it speaks to how quality of a team that we have, that we’ve lost all of those guys and we’re sitting here 46-15 and playing home baseball with two wins to get to Omaha. And again, like this game is not designed like football and basketball. And there’s going to be some failure in it. And I’m just proud of them for kind of withstanding some of that.”

Even when you have all the talent in the world, baseball will humble someone and make them deal with adversity. Luckily for LSU, Jay Johnson also pointed out that his team has responded well to that adversity and when necessary, the bullpen has been an asset.

“And the response. And we needed to do two things well. When we brought relievers into the game, they needed to be ready to get the first guy out because we’re bringing them in at a certain time to face a certain hitter. And we’ve started to do that really, really well. Every guy did that today,” Johnson said.

“Then when something goes wrong to reset for the next pitch. And mentally I would give pitchers a lot higher marks over the past couple of weeks, Georgia, SEC Tournament, and this weekend, prior to what we were doing the two weekends before that.”

Jay Johnson and LSU are going to need their pitchers to continue to play well in the Super Regional where the Tigers are going to host a talented Kentucky team. If the trend of pitching at LSU is to be believed, then LSU is certainly capable of doing that.

“And then you can look before that and there were some pretty good runs of pitching there, at Ole Miss and Tennessee here,” Johnson said. “And you start moving forward, there were some other guys coming into the end of the game that we’ll be excited to have back someday.”

Jay Johnson on LSU’s focus

After some success, it can be easy for a college team to lose its focus. However, Jay Johnson isn’t worried about this possibly happening.

“I think the best thing that happened was, as I said earlier in my opening statement, the preparation for this weekend was elite. So they have a blueprint. I want them to enjoy this. I think, if you don’t for a minute, you kind of forget about why are you actually doing this,” Johnson said.

“Then they’ll have a very structured plan starting with our meeting later tomorrow morning of how we’re going to attack next weekend. And I have no concern whatsoever of them being ready to play next weekend.”