re: Best LSU baseball player ever.

No. He showed no signs of being juiced up back then, and many many other LSU players did. So you have to give the dude a lot of respect for that.

I don't think MLB even banned androstenedione until 2004, so there were plenty of varying degrees of being juiced up, but I doubt that Furniss was on anything besides Creatine and protein shakes.

Walker ...he was "The Natural"

Well just take LSU as a baseline for overall collegiate pitching talent.

From 1987 to 1993, there was tons of it.

After 1993, it went away for a very long time.

After Laxton, Skip only had 2 pitchers of comparable talent to his old guns: Ainsworth & Tallet. That's it. You can throw in a Yarnall too if you want, but the anchors of the pitching staffs in Skip's later years were nowhere near what he had in earlier times.

So if LSU pitching got much worse, and LSU kept climbing higher in the college baseball world, what does that tell you about the rest of college baseball's pitching talent?




As for specifics, consider that Guthrie, McDonald, Springer, Leskanic, Ogea, Byrd, & Sirotka were all guys who ended up with over 30 wins in the Major Leagues.

No LSU pitcher since that group has broken 20 wins in the Majors yet, and I doubt that Tallet will break through to 30. Now Brian Wilson is different because he's a relief pitcher, but still, that's just one guy, and he wasn't as good in college as Barry Manuel or Rick Greene, both of whom also pitched in the Majors.

Belle belted 49 homers...to Walker's 52...but did so with 200 FEWER AT BATS!!!!

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I dont know dude, I always remember USC having strong staffs.

Standford when we played them in 2000 had 2-3 first round picks on the mound. Same with Texas that year.

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Yeah, this is right around when good pitchers started coming back to college baseball again. Typically, they had to be lured to a school with a great degree (at least that's a theory of mine to explain why Rice, Vandy, & Stanford were so good at recruiting them during the beginning of the decade).

But during Furniss's time from 1995 to 1998, who were the great pitchers? Kyle Peterson and Justin Wayne of Stanford? Seth Etherton of SCAL? Those guys weren't as good as their hype. They just happened to be the best available at the time.

When Mark Prior went to Vandy after turning down the Yankees in '98 coming out of high school (after playing at Vandy in '99 & '00 he transferred to SCAL as a junior for his last college season), that was a sign that things might be getting better soon. Then Huston Street went to Texas from 2002-04, etc., and that's when top pitching finally started returning to the college game.

But by this time other schools were starting to pass LSU up. That's telling.

Now don't get me wrong ... Doug Thompson, Brandon Bowe, Hunter Gomez, Bo Pettit, Tim Nugent, Lane Mestepey, Jake Tompkins, Nate Bumstead, etc. ... we love these guys because they were winners. But let's not pretend that they were great pitching talents. I mean, the 1997 pitching staff was pretty much the staff of Catholic High with Kevin Shipp from Central Private and Doug Thompson from Biloxi added in for good measure.

Were they champions and competitors? Yes. Did I love watching them play? Yes. Were they big time baseball talents? Hell no.

I bet the All-Americans from 1986 to 1992 were a whole lot better. One of which includes...

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Darren Dreifort

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Made his MLB debut in 1994.

As for the rest, it certainly looks like a dropoff to me. I'd say that Lidge, Zito, Sheets, Benson, Mulder, Anderson, & Wilson, were legit. But that's not a very big list. None of that talent was concentrated anywhere, and the biggest college pitching stars of the era outside of Kris Benson turned out to mostly be busts.

Lidge, Zito, Sheets, & Mulder, just seem like they were overlooked coming out of high school and went to schools not known for being baseball powerhouses. You could make the parity argument where small schools got better, but it just looks to me like college pitchers overall got worse.

I mean, at some point you have to explain how the LSU Tigers were able to outpitch other teams from 1995 to 1998 while getting less and less talent on their own roster.

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I mean, at some point you have to explain how the LSU Tigers were able to outpitch other teams from 1995 to 1998 while getting less and less talent on their own roster.

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They got by with only having decent pitching because they were busy setting offensive records those years

.

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and the biggest college pitching stars of the era outside of Kris Benson turned out to mostly be busts.

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I'd bet most of those guys won 30 MLB games like the criteria you set for the stud LSU pitchers


seriously though, ill post the best names from 86-93 or so.

jeff brantley
kevin brown
mike harkey
jack mcdowell
jim abbot
cal eldred
alex fernandez
mike mussina
paul shuey
ron villone
alan benes
Greg Swindell
Mike Remlinger
Derek Lilliquist
Andy Benes
Greg Olson
Ben McDonald
Araon Sele
Dreifort
Brian Anderson


where are the all time great MLB'ers?

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Again...loved TW...but Belle was a scary m-fer!

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When Joey and Terry were younger, they were two of the most polite, nice kids you could ever meet. How things can change.

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walker

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There's only one answer...