Jay Johnson says pitching Paul Skenes was 'pretty simple'

It was never much of a consideration to start anyone but ace pitcher Paul Skenes against Wake Forest on Thursday for LSU. After Skenes helped guide the Tigers to a win and a spot in the championship series against Florida, Tigers head coach Jay Johnson shared his pitching plan for the week and how it set LSU up to hand Skenes the ball on Thursday.

After losing to Wake Forest, 3-2, on Monday evening, LSU got up on Tuesday knowing they’d need to win three games in four days to make the championship series. Ahead of an elimination game against Tennessee that day, Johnson laid it out for his team.

“And then the pregame speech Tuesday was a really simple speech,” Johnson said. “On the whiteboard in our meeting room. I just wrote out Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday. And on Tuesday I wrote Nate [Ackenhausen]’s name down with eight other pitchers. And then we just drew lines over to Wednesday; it was going to be somebody in that grouping of nine. Thursday I wrote down Skenes and [Thatcher] Hurd.”

He concluded his speech by asking his team if they doubted the pitching gauntlet he had just thrown down for them.

“I looked at it and go, anybody have any questions whether we can do this or not. Great, let’s get on the bus. That was basically the announcement that Paul would pitch today,” Johnson said after Skenes befuddled Wake Forest’s offense for eight scoreless innings on Thursday.

Johnson had confidence that this team could run through the three-game ringer of the losers bracket after winning Game 1. That stemmed from the fact that Johnson did it once as a coach, when he was leading Arizona in 2016 and that LSU had done it a year later in 2017.

It was going to be a tightrope walk, but one a number of teams navigated before.

“So I felt like they just needed to be reminded of, we definitely can do this. Two things: I mean, my team in 2016 did it and LSU did it in 2017,” Johnson said. “So we weren’t doing something that was going to be unprecedented.”

With sterling performances from Ackenhausen in the first of three wins and then the bullpen — particularly Griffin Herring — in the second victory, it all set up for Skenes to climb the mound on Thursday.

And the ace didn’t disappoint for the Tigers, hurling eight innings of shutout, two-hit baseball while striking out nine Wake Forest batters. And he kept the game scoreless long enough to give LSU’s offense a chance to break through in the bottom of the 11th inning with a walk-off home run.