Jay Johnson raves about LSU baseball lineup flexibility

LSU baseball coach Jay Johnson broke down various ways to set his lineup ahead of the NCAA Super Regional.

The Tigers coach called it “Moneyball-ish,” to an extent. But Johnson looked at myriad statistics and situations to get his lineup right. But he has plenty of options.

He joined Sirius XM SEC Radio to break it all down.

“There’s a lot of things that go into all of that,” Johnson said. “You have to manage the value of you know, I don’t want to sound too ‘Moneyball-ish,’ but you know, runs scored versus runs saved. Who the pitching matchup is, who the pitcher is that day for us, all those types of things factor. Is it more of a fly ball guy doing more defense in the outfield? Is it more of a ground ball guy, do we need to do some things, shifting our infield around, somebody prefer throwing than somebody else?

“And then you’re looking at the opposing pitcher and where their trouble spots and in executing at getting outs and is there a certain hitter in our lineup with the skills that they have and fit against that pitcher?”

Johnson was honest about his team’s flexibility. There are a lot of options for LSU.

“Now when you have a deep team positionally, like we do, it gives you some lineup flexibility,” Johnson said. “We played the same lineup this weekend in all three games for a very specific reason. And they delivered. We played very good functional baseball. Situational hit in that game on Friday and won 7-2. Hit some home runs on Saturday when they made some mistakes and then Monday put together a complete game, you know, in all phases offensively. 

“So those guys did a nice job and it’s fun to look down the bench and you’re like, hey man I got four guys here I could interchange and the result probably wouldn’t be that much different.”

The head coach said staying present is the biggest key to success for LSU.

“So that’s one thing,” Johnson said. “And then the other thing is just legitimately, no matter where we’re at, that is where we were at. We’re not worried about the next game. We’re not worried about the next inning, the next pitch, just being incredibly present. And I think when you look at the complementary baseball that was played from the mound, from the field, offensively, executing in a lot of ways, they did that this weekend. 

“And so again my hope is that encourages them to stay locked into that frame of mind. And if they do that, then we play really good baseball. If they do that, I can legitimately surrender the result because I know the mindset is right.”