No. 1 ranked LSU opens preseason baseball practice

It didn’t matter where Dylan Crews was last summer, whether he was playing for Team USA or simply training.

But LSU’s rising junior centerfielder was determined to help second-year head coach Jay Johnson’s pursuit of transfer portal talent after the Tigers were eliminated last June by Southern Mississippi in the NCAA’s Hattiesburg Regional

Johnson’s eventual shopping spree, rated by Baseball America as college baseball’s No. 1 transfer class, included:

•North Carolina State third baseman Tommy White with his .362 batting average and 27 home runs as a freshman in 2022.

•Air Force pitcher/utility player Paul Skenes, who had a 2.96 ERA and 96 strikeouts in 85.2 innings (15 starts) last season and batted .314 with 10 doubles, 13 homers and 38 RBI.

•UCLA pitcher Thatcher Hurd, who had a 1.06 ERA in 34 innings last season as a freshman before a back injury ended his season prematurely.

•Infielder Ben Nippolt of Virginia Commonwealth, a first-team All-Atlantic 10 honoree last year when he batted .308 with 31 RBI.

•Vanderbilt pitcher Christian Little, who had a 4.65 ERA with 95 strikeouts in 32 appearances the last two seasons.

“Seeing the guys come over from other schools, I knew all of them,” Crews said Friday on the opening day of LSU’s preseason practice. “I tried my best to say something to try to get them to come here. Just to see the (roster) transformation from last year to this year is awesome.”

So much so that the Tigers will open their 56-game regular season schedule on Feb. 17 vs. Western Michigan ranked No. 1 in preseasons polls by Perfect Game, Baseball America and D1 Baseball.

Besides Johnson hitting the mother lode in transfers and a 14-member freshman class with six ranked by Perfect Game in the top 65 of incoming frosh, he returns six position players that started a significant number of games last season.

At the very top of the heap is Crews, ranked as the No. 1 overall pro prospect for the 2023 draft and named Collegiate Baseball’s 2023 Preseason Player of the Year. He batted .349 last season with 11 doubles, four triples, 22 homers, 72 RBI and 73 runs.

There’s also junior first baseman/preseason All-American Tre’ Morgan, senior outfielder/infielder Gavin Dugas, junior shortstop Jordan Thompson, junior outfielder/DH Brayden Jobert and sophomore outfielder Josh Pearson.

“Everyone's just really bought into the fact that we don't just want to be good, we want to be great,” Thompson said. “Everyone's been on the same page since day one. Everybody wants to get out here and work. When it's the middle of the day, there's guys at the field. When it 10 p.m., guys are at the field hitting. It's just really awesome to see.”

Johnson is embracing LSU’s preseason No. 1 status while understanding his team now has to go earn it on the field.

“It's like you're a firefighter (going into) that house (that) burns down, a similar analogy to going through the SEC schedule,” Johnson said. “If you tiptoe around it, if you hesitate, you're gonna get trumped because there's like 10 (SEC) teams ranked.

“So, you run right into the building. You get the hose out, start pulling everybody out and make sure everybody's safe. That's how we're going to approach it.

“If I tried to come out here and undersell that this team shouldn’t have high expectations, we're not running into the building and we're not gonna get the hoses out.”

Johnson will use 18 practices including 11 or 12 scrimmages in the next 21 days to mostly find a starting pitching rotation, a bullpen and position battles at second base and catcher where there are 3 or 4 candidates at each position.

Besides second base, the rest of the starting infield is Morgan at first base, White at third and Thompson at shortstop. The outfield will likely be Crews in center, sophomore Josh Pearson in left and freshman Paxton Kling in right.

Johnson confirmed Skenes will be the Tigers’ Friday night starter. When he’s not pitching, he’ll likely be LSU’s designated hitter.

“He’s got a lot of pitches and he knows how to use every single one of them,” White said of Skenes. “Not only that, but he’s very competitive on the mound. He’s a dog out there, he doesn’t want to lose.”

LSU’s starting pitching badly lacked in Johnson’s first year. Only superb bullpen work spurred the Tigers to a 40-22 record and a fourth-place finish in the SEC at 17-13 behind Tennessee and College World Series participants Texas A&M and Arkansas and three games ahead of CWS winner Ole Miss.

“We have a way to measure starting pitcher effectiveness, and I think we were 11th in our metrics in the SEC in starting pitchers,” Johnson said. “To finish in fourth place where you're 11th in starting pitching is a pretty good accomplishment. If I learned something last year, the pitching depth thing is so important “

Johnson also has five new staff members. Duke assistant Josh Jordan, former national assistant Coach of the Year, was hired as an assistant/recruiting coordinator to replace Dan Fitzgerald who became the University of Kansas head coach.

Minnesota Twins pitching coach Wes Johnson replaced Jason Kelly, who was named University of Washington head coach.

Other new staffers are Texas Rangers scout Josh Sampson as director of operations, Baton Rouge native and LSU graduate Josh Walker as trainer and UAB’s Derek Groomer as strength coach.

“When we got here 18 months ago, I did always have an eye on on 2023 and just trying to elevate everything we're doing from a recruiting and talent standpoint, from a development standpoint, from a staff standpoint,” Johnson said.

“I think there's more guys that maybe are balanced in terms of speed, power, solid hitting skills, defensive aptitude improvement. In terms of style, it's going to come down to what's required of the team or the offense or the defense that night to win.

“Any type of game – slugfest, one run game, any type of park small and big, any type of a day game, night game, wind blown in and wind blown out – we have to have a skill set to match that.”