Alleluia! Almost time for a "fab" LSU baseball season
BATON ROUGE — The LSU football team was ranked No. 6 entering the 2017 season. A month later, its coach was fired and the Tigers lost four or more games for the second time in three years. New coach Ed Orgeron inherits a team that has not been to a major postseason game since the 2011 season.
The LSU basketball team has not won a game in nearly a month, and its coach is in trouble. The Tigers have not advanced in the NCAA Tournament since the 2008-09 season.
But the LSU baseball team, which has reached the ultimate destination of the sport twice in the last four years and is ranked No. 2 in the nation, appears ready to get back to Omaha, Nebraska, and the College World Series, and retain its status as clearly LSU’s No. 1 athletic program of the big three.
“For me, I’ll know it’s a good year when we’re on the plane coming back from Omaha on June 27 with that trophy,” ace pitcher Alex Lange said Friday at Media Day.
Lange, who was among the top prep pitching prospects in 2014, is the last of LSU's Terrific Trio - billed as perhaps the best threesome in football, basketball and baseball in LSU history - that was supposed to terrorize the rest of the Southeastern Conference and the nation. Leonard Fournette, the No. 1 prep prospect in the nation in 2014, came to LSU promising a Heisman Trophy amid thoughts of a national championship. But he left the football team following his junior season in 2016 after leading the race for the Heisman in 2015 before a late fall and only third tier postseason games at the Music City and Texas bowls. Ben Simmons, the No. 1 basketball prospect in the world in 2015, left the basketball team after one season and became the first player drafted in the NBA, but he was unable to get a very talented Tigers' team to even the NCAA Tournament.
“National championships are what this culture and this talent expects, and that’s what we expect," said Lange, a four-time first team All-American as in 2015 and the national freshman of the year before a dip last season. "That’s the only goal that we have.”
Multiple LSU baseball players turned down decent money and the Major League Baseball Draft after last season’s Super Regional loss to eventual national champion Coastal Carolina in Alex Box Stadium to return to the Tigers.
“Omaha is why I came back,” LSU senior shortstop Kramer Robertson said. “That’s all I think about. We don’t want to talk about it too much now in January, but that’s the reason I came back, 100 percent.”
The Tigers return eight seniors who have played significant time, which is more than in any other year under coach Paul Mainieri, who will enter his 11th season on Feb. 17 when the Tigers host Air Force.
Three of those seniors — Robertson, second baseman Cole Freeman and left-handed pitcher Jared Poche — could have made decent money by turning pro. Greg Deichmann, a draft-eligible sophomore first baseman last year, could have as well, but he is back and in right field.
“It’s the standard of excellence that LSU holds, and we hold ourselves to it,” Deichmann said. “We try to meet that every single year.”
Mainieri thought as last season ended that there was a chance he would not have any of the above four — Robertson, Freeman, Poche and Deichmann — for the 2017 season.
“I’m going to call those guys my Fab Four,” he said. “Our team would have had a significantly different look to it if those four guys were not back. I still think we would’ve had a really good team. But having those four guys back just elevates your confidence in your team because of the experience, ability and the leadership.”
Freeman led the team with a .329 batting average in 2016. Robertson was fourth on the team with a .324 average and was tied for third with 39 RBIs. Deichmann led the team with 11 home runs and 57 RBIs. Mainieri said he could hit 20 this season.
"I don't have a number in mind, but 20 would be good," Deichmann said.
Poche was the top pitcher with a 9-4 record and 3.35 earned run average, just ahead of Lange at 8-4 and 3.79 last season.
In all, eight starters are back, which is also a high mark for Mainieri. Sophomore Antoine Duplantis of Lafayette will move from right field to center field after finishing second on the team in hitting last year at .327. Junior Beau Jordan, who hit .286 with 39 RBIs last season, will return to left field, but sophomore Brennan Breaux of St. Thomas More High in Lafayette has a chance to beat him out.
Sophomore Chris Reid started at third base last season, but at the moment he is behind freshman Josh Smith of Catholic High in Baton Rouge. Freshman Jake Slaughter of Ouachita Christian High in Monroe is slated to take Deichmann’s old spot at first base. Both catchers return in junior Michael Papierski, who hit .242 in 40 starts last year, and senior Jordan Romero, who hit .297 with nine home runs and 41 RBIs in 36 starts.
“We’ve been excited about this season since Poche said he was coming back,” Robertson said. “Once we got all four of us back, there was a lot to be excited about. Once Greg announced he was coming back, I was like, ‘Man, I kind of want to come back.’ So, then I came back, and then Cole came back.”
And Mainieri’s smile kept getting wider.
“Clearly, I’ve never had four players of this impact come back,” he said. “It’s just so rare in college baseball because the best players like this are generally signing after their junior year. It’s just the nature of pro ball.”
And the nature of LSU baseball is reaching Omaha, which will be warm in June. It has happened four times under Mainieri and 17 times overall.
“Obviously, we’re really excited about the new season,” he said. “We have a chance, I think, to do something special this year. We’ve got quite a veteran presence on our team. As a coach, you want to make this special for them. You want them to know that coming back for their senior year was worth it – that we’re going to Omaha, that we’re going to win a national championship. And that’s the attitude that we’re going into it with.”
Glenn Guilbeau covers LSU sports for the USA Today Network of Louisiana. Follow him on Twitter at @LSUBeatTweet. Coverage of LSU and commentary by Guilbeau supported by Hebert’s Town & Country Automobile Dealer in Shreveport located at 1155 East Bert Kouns Loop. Research your next Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep or Ram at http://hebertstandc.com/.)