LSU's Paul Mainieri seeking to solve pitching injuries and lack of hitting
In just about two months, LSU baseball will open fall practice on September 29.
Tigers’ coach Paul Mainieri, whose 40-26 2019 squad was swept on its homefield in the Super Regionals by Florida State, is eager for the new challenge of trying to blend a veteran pitching staff and replacing four position starters including last season’s top three hitters.
“Last season ended a couple wins short of getting to Omaha, that’s always a disappointment for us when we can’t finish the job,” Mainieri said at his annual end-of-the summer press conference. “But I also thought we did some tremendous things considering the adversity we had with all the pitching injuries. We never had what we thought would be our starting pitching rotation together the entire season.”
He’ll build his 2020 team around returning starters catcher Saul Garza, first baseman Cade Beloso, left fielder Daniel Cabrera and hopefully a starting pitching rotation of Cole Henry, Jaden Hill and Landon Marceaux.
On what the LSU pitching staff did this summer: “We shut down Cole Henry, Landon Marceaux, Devin Fontenot, (Trent) Vietmeier and all the rest of the guys for the summer. Reports are is they all feel great.
“Jaden Hill doesn’t start his throwing program until Aug. 11, but man does he look good. He has been here all summer in the weight room, and he has developed his body into a man. He’s about 225 right now and looks great. We’re hoping all that additional strength is going to give his elbow good stability.
“A.J. Labas has been here all summer going to school and rehabbing. I saw him throw in a bullpen yesterday and he looked really good from a distance. He threw about 40 pitches, he was touching 90 miles an hour and his command was real good.
“Can’t give you an update on (Nick) Storz or (Easton) McMurray. Neither of them has thrown.”
On why he changed hitting coaches, replacing Sean Ochinko with Eddie Smith: “I know I told you (the media) at the end of the season that I didn’t anticipate making any changes. But realistically, what do you want me to say?
“I did some careful analysis of our program after the season ended. I felt like we just need to get a person of experience with a proven record, somebody that really had a game plan of how to develop hitters.
“When I sat down with Eddie and talked with him about it, I was again mesmerized by his organization, his plan, the drills he does, the purpose of the drills, the success they had. In all honesty, I felt like we were totally on the same page when it comes to hitting and offensive baseball.
“This is not a knock on anybody before him. You know how much I love Sean Ochinko, Micah Gibbs and all the coaches before who did well with our hitters. But I felt we were just weren’t maximizing our potential and I think Eddie will bring the potential out of these guys.”
On the 2019 schedule: “The schedule hasn’t been approved yet by the Board of Supervisors. But we are committed going back to playing in the Minute Maid Tournament this year in Houston in third week of the season. We’ll play the Texas Longhorns Friday night, followed by games against Baylor and Oklahoma.
"We open the season at home with the Indiana Hoosiers. They have an excellent program. They lost in the regional finals at Louisville, took them right to the wire. It will a very tough opening series.
“The opening weekend of SEC play will be at Ole Miss and the final series will be at Auburn. Our SEC East home opponents are defending national champion Vanderbilt and South Carolina, and our two SEC East road series are at Tennessee and Kentucky. Georgia, Missouri and Florida aren’t on our schedule this year."
On what is being done to avoid a repeat of all the pitching injuries: “We’re doing a lot of things to wrap our arms around it. This is Alan’s (Dunn) ninth year here as pitching coach. The first six years, we hardly had anything happen. Put our track record against any team in the country and I bet we had the fewest injuries of any team.
“The last two years we’ve had a stretch of bad luck. Alan hasn’t done anything different with the kids. We haven’t done anything different with the way we’ve used them in the games.
“Some of these injuries were youngsters who arrived here already dealing with those injuries. They weren’t caused by us or the way we used our players.
“But we just felt it was time to bring in some groups that are into analyzing (pitching) body movements and their performance and even measuring joints like their shoulders and elbows that could maybe potentially be at risk. Maybe there’s times when we need to back off or maybe even do more.
“There’s some specialization now we can take advantage of from a technology standpoint that maybe could be an aid to our trainer, to our pitching coach and to our head coach that can maybe help prevent some of this.
“There’s a thousand theories about what causes injuries and who knows what the right one is? But we do know that these kids are playing baseball year-round now. Their bodies aren’t getting a rest.
“We’re also going to take our batting cage and take a portion of it to develop a pitching lab. We can give Alan an isolated area where we can put some modern technology with these super slow-motion cameras where you can virtually slow down the release of the ball from the pitcher’s arm frame-by-frame. By analyzing that, maybe we can see if anything is causing (arm) discomfort.
“So, we’re entering into that technology era that so many schools and major league team are taking advantage of and we don’t want to be left behind.”
On having two left-handed pitchers on the staff, one more than last year: “We hope McMurray comes back healthy because he’s a good left-handed arm. I really excited about (freshman signee) Jacob Hasty (from Keller, Texas). You hear from people from the state of Texas say he had the second-best breaking ball in Texas. Jacob can also run it up there at 92 miles an hour. He’s very intelligent. I think he can help us in a big way. We’re hoping to add one more pitcher to the staff and we’re hoping it will be a left-hander.”
On his 2019-20 signing class: “We have 12 new players and we may add a 13th player in the next couple of weeks. There was more emphasis on the everyday position athlete vs. last year when we brought in mostly pitchers. We felt like we needed to address the catching position the infield and we added some impact outfielders.
“We are very fortunate to have (freshman infielder) Cade Doughty. I have the same feeling about him being here as I had about Alex Bregman or Aaron Nola, someone that you knew if they signed professionally, you wouldn’t blame them.
“We were able to sign two really good players this summer who became available because the schools they signed national letters of intent with decided to make coaching changes at the head coaching spot. These players are Zack Mathis, who is a junior college transfer from northern California, and Zach Arnold, a freshman infielder from Temecula, California. They’re both really good all-around ballplayers, and there’s no question they’ll give us greater depth, but also have a good chance to step in and be impact players for us right away.
“I’m real excited about the two freshmen catchers that are coming in, Alex Milazzo from Zachary (La.) and Hayden Travinski from Airline High School in Shreveport (La.). I think between those two guys, combined with (junior catcher) Saul Garza, give us a really good catching core.”
On working with new athletic director Scott Woodward: “He wants excellence, he wants greatness, he wants to do it the right way and he wants to represent LSU the way it’s supposed to be represented. I think I’m going to like working for him.
“I think his expectations are going to be high. He’s going to hold me accountable, he’s going to hold our coaching staff accountable. He’s going to expect a good return from what they are providing for us, and that’s what you want. You want to be given the tools for success and have people expect you to be successful. I’m not afraid of that. If I was, I would have never come here. I’m not afraid of Scott’s expectations. LSU is all about excellence.”