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baseball Edit

Tigers maxed out in 2016

There was certainly some anxiety involving the prospects for the 2016 LSU baseball season.

There would be an inexperienced everyday lineup with Jake Fraley the only returning starter from the Tigers’ 2015 College World Series squad. Pitching would have to carry LSU for another run to the CWS.

Kramer Robertson
Kramer Robertson
AP Photo/Gerald Herbert

Credit should be given to coach Paul Mainieri for getting this Tigers squad to within two victories of a second straight trip to Omaha. The numbers put together by the pitching staff were mediocre, at best.

Both Alex Lange (3.79) and Jared Poche (3.35) had earned run averages much higher than preceding seasons. Lange had a 1.97 ERA as a freshman, while Poche’s ERA through his first two years was 2.78. Lange, who was 12-0 in 2015, lost four times this season. Opponents hit .272 against Poche.

Hunter Newman was the only pitcher who threw significant innings to have an earned run average below 3.40. The team ERA for 2016 was 3.97. Opponents batted .252 against LSU pitchers. One year earlier, the team ERA was 2.98 and opponents batted .230 against Tigers hurlers.

So, more pressure went on the backs of LSU’s inexperienced lineup. The team batting average was .295 – 19 points lower than last year. However, the Tigers scored only 25 fewer runs in the same number of games (66) as last season.

The top two hitters were junior college transfer Cole Freeman (.329), who batted ninth most of the year, and freshman Antoine Duplantis (.327), who was the leadoff hitter for most of the season.

Kramer Robertson, a .212 hitter in his first two years, ended up being the No. 3 hitter in the lineup. Robertson hit .324 with 61 runs scored and 39 RBIs. Greg Deichmann, who played sparingly as a freshman, finished with good offensive numbers – a .288 batting average with 11 homers and 57 RBIs.

Fraley had a consistent campaign with his third consecutive .300 batting average (.326) to go along with five homers and 36 runs batted in and 61 runs scored. Blake Dean, Mikie Mahtook and Alex Bregman are the only other players with three straight .300 seasons in the past ten years.

Mainieri guided LSU on a late-season surge which earned it a national seed. Following a series loss to Ole Miss, the Tigers had a 28-16 overall record, including 11-10 in the Southeastern Conference. LSU closed the regular season on an 11-1 run, including two victories in three games against Florida.

The Tigers won three of four games in the SEC tournament – including another victory against the Gators and one against SEC champion Mississippi State. LSU’s tournament title hopes ended with a 1-0 loss to Florida in the semifinals.

The strong play down the stretch was enough to get the Tigers the No. 8 national seed. LSU was taken to a deciding game by Rice in the regional tournament. The Tigers did what was necessary to win 5-2. But, LSU could not duplicate its performance against Coastal Carolina in the super-regional series.

The Chanticleers, who were 0-4 in previous super-regional series, played like the more experienced squad they were last weekend. Bad pitching cost the Tigers in the first game. Lack of clutch hitting was the culprit in the second game. The LSU season was over without another visit to the CWS.

This season’s 45-21 record was the fourth worst in Mainieri’s ten years – better than 29-26-1 in 2007, 36-20 in 2011 and 41-22 in 2010. The Tigers’ 2014 squad had a 46-16-1 record, but it failed to win a home regional like this year’s team.

Last week’s major league draft showed that the LSU roster did not have a solid combination of experience and talent. The Tigers had one player drafted in the first 13 rounds – Fraley. The last time LSU had such results in the Major League Baseball draft was 2007.

Florida, which is in the CWS, had ten players picked in the first eight rounds. SEC tournament champion Texas A&M and regular-season champion Mississippi State had 12 and 10 players chosen in the first 20 rounds, respectively. By comparison, the Tigers had four players selected in the first 20 rounds.

Although LSU fans consider a year to be disappointing if it doesn’t end in Omaha, there was nothing disappointing about what this Tigers squad did on the field in 2016.

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