Crews and Skenes have made LSU baseball Friday nights a must-see this year
Jay Johnson was Arizona’s head baseball coach when he first laid eyes on outfielder Dylan Crews at the Team USA trials for the 15-year-old and under squad.
“He stood out like a sore thumb,” Johnson said of Crews’ advanced skills.
Johnson had just finished his first season as LSU’s head coach early last summer when he met pitcher Paul Skenes in Colorado to discuss his possible transfer to LSU from Air Force.
Johnson was waiting in his car outside a restaurant when Skenes arrived and got out of his car unfolding his 6-6, 240-pound frame.
“When he got out “I was like `Oh, my goodness, that’s a physical specimen, that's what a major league pitcher looks like’,” Johnson said.
What Johnson knew about Crews after coaching him last season and what he has learned this year about Skenes is they are both cut from the same cloth of self-discipline.
The two juniors from opposite sides of the U.S. – Crews from Florida and Skenes from California -- prepare for each game like professionals. They seek the tiniest bits of information to give them an edge. Their work ethic is second-to-none. They are great teammates who are a big deal but don’t act as such.
And if most projections are accurate, Crews and Skenes will become in July at the 59th annual major league draft the first players ever from the same school selected with the No. 1 and No. 2 picks in the same draft.
Which has made Friday nights special this season, like tonight at 7:30 in Alex Box Stadium when the No. 2 Tigers (38-10 overall, 16-7 SEC West) open their final conference home series of the regular season vs. Mississippi State (24-23, 6-18 SEC West).
It's a reminder there’s just one or two home games in an NCAA regional and possibly a Super Regional to watch college baseball’s second leading hitter (Crews) who’s batting 457 and college baseball strikeout leader with 139 (Skenes) in action together.
Johnson, while trying to get the six-time national champion Tigers back to the College World Series for the first time since 2017, admits he pauses to appreciate the brilliance of Crews and Skenes.
“There will be times when Dylan will do something at the plate, our analytics guy Jamie Tutko is standing next to me and we’ll just shake our heads,” Johnson said. “And then we’ll be sitting on the (team) bus after a night last week (at Auburn when Skenes had a career-high 15 strikeouts) and it’s unbelievable what Paul did.”
Crews is the team’s poster boy for Johnson’s mantra of his hitters taking “professional at-bats." It means not swinging at pitches out of the strike zone, battling with two strikes, crushing pitchers’ mistakes and moving the ball forward with runners in scoring position.
It seems Crews excels in any situation. This season in two-out at-bats, he’s batting .636 with 14 RBI. He’s hitting .471 after falling behind 0-2 in the count. In a 3-2 count, he’s hitting .315 and drawing almost three times as many walks (23) as he has strikeouts (8). When he hits a first pitch of an at-bat, he averages .545.
“He’s the best college hitter I’ve ever seen,” Johnson said of Crews. “His bat speed is elite. His vision is elite. Put those things together and it allows him to make later swing decisions which usually helps you separate balls from strikes.
“The combination of those skills allows him to have really good plate discipline. And he has the maturity to understand he’s going to get pitched differently.”
Crews’ most impressive stat of all is he has reached base in 52 straight games dating back to last season.
He’s done this by embracing every technique that Johnson has made available to the team, including visualization, proper breathing techniques for relaxation during an at-bat and having a focal point like staring at his bat logo as he steps to the plate to clear his mind.
“I’m really big on the mental game,” Crews said a couple of weeks ago on former LSU pitcher Anthony Ranaudo’s podcast The Up and In Show. “This game is so hard. You’ve got to understand most of it is mental. I’m like `How can I take that? How can I get that advantage over somebody else?’”
Crews made the career decision to come to LSU when he withdrew his name from the 2020 draft because he felt he wasn’t fully developed as a player. He’s improved in each of his three seasons and has a career batting average of .381 which is the second best in school history behind Todd Walker’s .396 from 1992 to 1994.
LSU starting shortstop Jordan Thompson, Crews’ roommate since they were freshmen, said Crews has been consistent on and off the field from day one.
“He's 21 years old right now and he's always been the same person since freshman year,” Thompson said. “When he came here, you could have thought that he was a junior about to get drafted.”
Skenes also made a career choice after two seasons at Air Force where he played pitcher, catcher, designated hitter and first base.
He won the John Olerud Award last year as the best two-way player in college baseball. But he knew if he wanted to accelerate toward a major league career, he needed to transfer to a major college power where everything he did mentally and physically centered on improving as a pitcher.
The proof he made the correct decision is spread throughout his 12 starts this season as a Tiger.
With a 9-1 record and besides leading the nation in strikeouts, he’s first nationally strikeouts per nine innings (17.22), strikeout-to-walk ratio (10.69) and WHIP (0.77). He’s also No. 1 in the SEC in ERA (1.73), innings pitched (72.2) and opponent batting average (.165).
He has thrown 66.9 percent of his pitches for strikes, has averaged almost 99 pitches per game including throwing 105 or more in seven of his eight SEC starts.
Skenes has struck out at least one batter in all 72 innings he has completed. He has struck out the first batter in an inning 43 times, the last batter in an inning 46 times and three batters in an inning 11 times.
Having been clocked still throwing close to 100 miles an hour in the final inning of his action in each of his starts, he has struck out multiple batters in his last inning 10 times.
“The biggest thing for me is just being able to recover throughout the week,” Skenes said of resting and not having to be in lineup every game as he was at Air Force where the daily physical and mental demands of being a cadet and athlete is taxing.
“Because you know you sleep well, one night you can show up and feel good the next day you can do more that day. And then you know you recover.
“It's just a cycle that builds on it throughout itself. And you know, over a long period of time that you can see noticeable improvements. You can say what you want about the resources and the coaching which have all been great, but literally just getting consistent sleep I think has been the biggest thing.”
Skenes also can solely prepare all week for his one start.
He pitches Friday, has Saturday off and loves being a rah-rah guy in the dugout (“He’s having fun keeping it loose with the guys,” Thompson said), he has an extensive weight workout on Sundays (“He looks like he just got out of a boxing match,” Johnson said), he reviews his previous game video with pitching coach Wes Johnson on Monday, he throws bullpen Tuesday and mentally prepares for the next opponent the rest of the week.
“It's really exceptional and I hope that young pitchers in the program are really paying attention,” Johnson said of Skenes’ preparation. “He's just absolutely modeling how you do it at the highest level.”
Skenes has also fit in the LSU locker room. One of the things his teammates love is on the day of his starts he always wear a T-shirt featuring several pictures of one of his teammates.
“I was the first one,” LSU senior designated hitter Cade Belsoo said. “I think that's one of the coolest traditions I've ever seen. It's so funny to see who's on his shirt every Friday. He loves it, everybody else loves it. Everybody gets to sign it afterward. It’s hilarious.”
Such a gesture lends credence to what Johnson likes the most about his two superstars and why he’ll miss them dearly once the season ends and they move on to professional careers.
“They're better people than players, and they're the best player and the best pitcher in college baseball,” Johnson said. “It's not lost on me the impact that they make.
“They have their whole world in front of them literally, and all they're focused on right now is our team and I'm really proud of them for that. They are unquestionably the leaders of our team
.“They set a high bar the rest of the players have met. I think they're all really enjoying this time together.”
No. 2 LSU (38-10 overall, 16-7 SEC West) vs. Mississippi State (24-23, 6-18 SEC West), Alex Box Stadium
Game 1: Friday, 7:30 p.m. CT (SEC Network+)
Game 2: Saturday, 6 p.m. CT (SEC Network+)
Game 3: Sunday, 1 p.m. CT (SEC Network +)
THE SERIES: Mississippi State leads the overall series with LSU, 208-194-1, but LSU has won 13 of the past 15 SEC regular season series with the Bulldogs. LSU has also won four of the past five series, including a three-game sweep last season in Starkville, Miss.
THE SEC RACE: LSU enters this weekend’s series just 0.5 game behind Vanderbilt and Arkansas for first place in the overall SEC standings. The Tigers are seeking the school’s first SEC regular-season title since 2017.
The Tigers’ eight-game SEC win streak ended with last Saturday’s loss at Auburn. The eight-game SEC win streak was LSU’s longest in a single season since 2017 when the Tigers won eight straight league games from May 6-May 20. Last Sunday’s loss at Auburn marked the first time this season that LSU has lost two games in-a-row.
STAT COMPARISON: LSU is No. 1 in the SEC in eight offensive categories – batting average (.313), slugging percentage (.566), on-base percentage (.442), runs (465), hits (497), RBI (426), doubles (94) and hit-by-pitch (105). Mississippi State is No. 10 in the SEC in team batting average (.283), and it has 81 home runs and 69 steals in 77 attempts. MSU’s pitching staff is No. 14 in the SEC with a 6.74 cumulative ERA.