Was Jay Johnson too loyal to his returning roster?

You don’t tell players like Milazzo and travinski to take a hike when you lose the experience we did even if travinski is completely apathetic.

Like Florida shite just happens sometimes. I’ll melt if we repeat this next season.

He thought the pitching and defense would carry this team, but they have been the most disappointing aspect

yeah I think he put way too much faith in guys taking the next step on the lineup, but he was agressive with the pitching staff. We got 2 starters besides Hurd so it’s not like we put all our eggs in that basket, but Hurd sucking absolutely fricked this teM

we brought back Kling and Pearson and…. no one else in the outfield. It’s crazy we were more agressive there.

And. the infield too. I know you eventually have to play the guys you recruit but Neal and Kling were huge question marks coming into the season.

Jones was the only sophmore
I though showed signs of life last year in SEC play,

Jay thought he could teach 3/4 of our offensive players to hit for average in one offseason. It didn't happen.

This team lost a lot of the lineup after last season. People need to deal with it. Would you have rather had a loaded team last season and not bring home a championship and have a good season this season with no guarantee to win it all or win it all last year and rebuild this year and maybe next season because the lineup was depleted? I'll take the championship every few years and rebuild when necessary. Still the best baseball program in the country.

I just don't know how we got run over in the portal. And yeah, I know we got a meaningless ranking that claimed we had the second best portal class, but that was mostly based on getting Holman and Jump who were top end available players. But other teams did a much better job of filling holes throughout their rosters, whereas we really didn't do near enough to offset the losses to our lineup.

I don't know if we just got beat out for players, or if it was that Jay had too much confidence in guys like Kling, Frey, Neal and his top incoming freshmen to step up and produce. and didn't really put much emphasis on hitters in the portal. Mac Bingham's track record prior to last year seemed to suggest his numbers may have been a little fluky last year, to me. Seems like maybe that was the case. But he was the big get on the position player side.

In years past, when you had a mass exodus of talented players in one offseason, it was just one of those things that happens, and you had to accept that you were going to need a lot of young guys to step up, or you were going to struggle. But in the age of the portal, where the top teams are just buying whatever they need and reloading every year, there was really no excuse for LSU, coming off a national title, to get left in the dust. Also, player development is overall lagging behind.