re: College Baseball Nation Way Too Early 2023 Baseball Rankings- LSU at #1

I honestly don’t have a theory. It’s hard to fathom that Doughty and Thompson just forgot how to play defense. But I’ll go position by position just to give my breakdown.

C - Losing Millazo goes without saying killed our defense behind the plate. Travinski was always a DH option in my mind. I never thought he was much of a defender. McManus honestly wasn’t terrible, but always seemed to have lapses in concentration in key moments. Again, when he was brought in, I think he was an offensive upgrade at the position when offense was needed. But the job was always going to be Millazo’s.

1B - probably an unpopular opinion, but TM missed a lot of picks he routinely made last year. His flare and quickness is unmatched, but a lot of the errors he saved last year didn’t happen this year.

2B - I personally hated Doughty there and always thought he was more comfortable at 3rd. He looked uncomfortable sitting back on balls rather than just reacting and being an athlete at the hot corner.

3B - Berry actually settled in to be serviceable before he got hurt. And he’s obviously a bat you can’t take out of the lineup.

SS - Just awful, no other way to describe it. I do remember Johnson praising his defense in the off-season, so maybe he just didn’t foresee what it would look like in the regular season.

LF - Dugas was never a terrible fielder. His injury started the revolving door and no one seemed to want to take the job.

CF - Crews actually looked uncomfortable initially in CF. Then the light turned on for him and he turned into Jim Edmonds out there.

RF - Gio was a solid option out there initially until his bat went completely dead. Pearson was definitely an offense over defense kind of move.

I honestly think Jobert made things more difficult for JJ to find the best defensive lineup. When Jobert was hot, there was no one better and JJ just didn’t want to take him out the lineup.


In case this is TLDR; my theory is I have no effing clue why the defense was so bad. But I find it hard to believe that a coach and program of this caliber didn’t practice defense in the off-season (even is offense was emphasized more).