Jay Johnson addresses recent slump, bullpen struggles, approach

Head coach Jay Johnson met with the media after LSU dropped it’s second consecutive game, losing its second consecutive series on Sunday evening in Baton Rouge. The Tigers dropped to 39-12 on the season and 17-9 in conference play as they now enter the final week of the regular season.

On Tuesday, LSU faces McNeese at home, before heading to Georgia to face the Bulldogs in the final series of the regular season. The SEC Tournament begins May 23, then the NCAA Tournament starts June 2.

It’s been a shaky close to the season for Johnson’s team, now dropping to No. 5 in the country in the latest D1 Baseball poll. Here’s what he said when addressing the media after the loss on Sunday. 

On the series loss…

“It is painful, but we have baseball ahead of us and that’s where we’ll turn our focus. Tough loss, and in the context of losing a game, probably as difficult as it could be. We get the opportunity to move forward and that’s what we have to do.”

On the challenges of managing the bullpen

“I’m just going to coach my butt off and help those guys win the game. There are guys who didn’t execute for us today that have executed for us before. There are guys that are really struggling to find themselves, but it’s a team effort. It’s offense, it’s defense, it’s pitching. We are where we are and we’re going to keep attacking with what we have and figure out a way to come out on the right side of that type of game.”

Takeaways from the series…

“[Every series] is no different. It’s the only league where there are no gimmies. Fortunately for us, we’ve played ourselves into a really good position to have a little margin for error, but we were going for it. These guys really want to win. Guys are cramping up, throwing up, heat exhaustion, and still wanting that fifth and sixth at bat. I’ll take my chances with their talent and that attitude every single day. We just came up short today.”

On keeping the mentality right…

“These guys are different than normal people. It might be tough for normal people, but I still don’t believe they’re normal. I feel really good about their competitive character. We lost a tough game. We lost a tough series. We made mistakes and didn’t perform, but we can focus on the play. I don’t have to focus on the people part with them. We focus on the play.”

On the bullpen…

“We have some building up we have to do, but at the same time, the two things we can not remove are the pressure of the situation and the fatigue of the season. If that is limiting them, there’s nothing we can do about that. We just have to find who can pitch and deal with it. I thought Riley did a really good job today and a lot of the other guys didn’t. They all gave us something. Griffin was rolling, Christian got us out of that bases loaded jam, then it’s a nine run lead at that point, so we let him go back out there to get a couple more outs and he didn’t. We got it to the point where the game was right there, as bad as the pitching was. We had a chance to win the game and we didn’t.“

On being battle tested…

“There’s not a team we’ve played through nine weekends that could not be a regional championship team. I really believe that. We’ve been tested. The entire league has been tested. I’m sure you’ll see the league have success in the NCAA tournament, so knowing that’s in front of you, there’s nowhere to go but forward. It’s not a given to be in the NCAA Tournament. It’s not. What you want to have is confidence that you’ve played well enough to win tight games. We didn’t do that last night or today, so yea you’d love to be clicking on all cylinders, but we’re not. We have to go back to the play.” 

On Wes Johnson’s approach to the struggles

“He works. Whether it’s strikes, helping them design a pitch, preparing extra, working with me to match them up and put them in the best position to be successful. He’s an incredibly positive person and that’s what they need right now. That’s what we have to be. The leadership has to be there during tough times. The good part about it is, we’re having tough times right now in a pretty good spot. We’re just going to keep going.”