Tommy white 2-3 with two doubles and three RBIs currently

He in AAA?

Brings me back to the White, Crews, Morgan, Beloso, Dugas era. Every at bat a competitive at bat no matter the result. Good times.

That 23 team would chase aces in the 4th inning with how many pitches they would foul off. You don’t know what you have until it’s gone

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That 23 team would chase aces in the 4th inning with how many pitches they would foul off. You don’t know what you have until it’s gone

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I don’t know. I pretty much knew what we had in real time. That was the deepest lineup I can remember, not just at LSU, but in CBB in general. Especially once Travinski took off. Even before that, Milazzo was putting the bat on the ball and not the automatic out he had been his 1st 2 years.

Literally, everybody in that lineup could get hot and do damage. And it could absorb prolonged slumps like Jordan Thompson had. But even with the perceived down year he had—and a lot of that was defensive, but he went a while without hitting—he still slashed .246/.365/.430 with 12 doubles, 11 homers, and 53 RBI.

We had 7 guys who hit over .300:

Crews—.426 (.567 OBP)
White—.374 (.432)
Trav—.357 (.465)
Beloso—.324 (.462)
Morgan—.316 (.418)
Jones—.304 (.426)
Jobert—.301 (.409)
*Dugas—.290 (.464)

*Dugas didn’t hit .300, but was 2nd behind Crews with 44 walks and lead the team—by a lot—with 33 HBP and his .464 OBP was 3rd on the team behind only Crews and Travinski.

We had 7 guys with an OPS over 1.000, and 2 others over .900:

Crews—1.280
White—1.158
Trav—1.157
Beloso—1.083
Jones—1.065
Dugas—1.053
Jobert—1.005

Morgan—.920
Kling—.913

For the season, the entire team slashed .308/.432/.554 (.986 OPS)

That’s insane. And like I said, even Milazzo wasn’t the automatic out he has been previously. He had no slug whatsoever—only 1 of his 28 hits was for extra bases—but he handled the bat well and slapped a bunch of singles into RF and wound up slashing .289/.369/.299.

And that’s not even counting Pearson (.226/.393/.387) or Neal (.209/.411/.388), neither of whom really hit all year, but who both got on base and had the pop to run into one every now and then.

We had 8 guys with double digit homers and 1 with 9:

White—24
Crews—18
Dugas—17
Beloso—16
Jobert—14
Jones—14
Thomspon—11
Travinski—10
Morgan—9

Pearson—4, Kling—4, Neal—3
Team total—144

So 133 of our 144 homers were by the 9 guys in our everyday lineup by the end of the year.

We had 7 guys with double digit doubles, 8 guys with 45+ RBI, etc…There were just no automatic outs. Even the guys slumping were always capable of hitting a mistake way up into the bleachers. The opposing pitchers just couldn’t ever catch their breath. Almost every pitch they threw was high leverage, so we would run them and get into their bullpens early. That was probably a once in a lifetime lineup as far as depth goes. I don’t think the ‘97 team was even that dangerous towards the bottom. Relatively speaking, anyway.

To me, that’s the biggest problem with this year’s offense. The lineup is just not that deep—especially in the middle. And it can’t absorb slumps by our best players. I think it goes as DC goes. When he’s hot like the last couple of weeks, it extends the lineup so much and makes it easier on everyone.

And it’s not fair to him, but if he’s not getting a couple knocks a game like this weekend, everybody else can be pitched around. Even our guys who can really barrel it up like Serna and Braun, aren’t hitting it out of the park. And you’ve got to hit some 3-run homers to win consistently.