re: Xavier LHP Justin Loer Commits to LSU

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Can you link? Would love to read lol

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Justin Loer Announcement The Adovocate

2024 MLB Draft Prospects List - J. Loer at #79

Justin Loer Twitter Annoucement

Justin Loer D1 Baseball Stats

That's a great get by Jay! The Tigers doing work!

FYI that isn’t him in the op

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Yeah then you include current players that could develop into a quality starter like Dutton or Collins

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I’d be surprised if either one of these guys are back, and absolutely shocked if they both are. With the injuries to our pen, Hurd’s early struggles, and Little’s—hell, I don’t know what to call Little’s performance—not only was there plenty of opportunity for Dutton and Collins to step up and not just eat innings, but to really contribute. And neither one took advantage of it.

Dutton just doesn’t have great SEC stuff, but they were REALLY counting on Collins this year, and for whatever reason, he just shite the bed. And they were counting on Collins to have a big role even before the injuries. His velocity was up to mid 90s, he was commanding a filthy slider with a really tight break that was gonna be really tough on righties so he could come in and get outs in really high leverage situations. Skenes was obviously the talk of the fall—Taylor too—and some of the new guys, but I heard multiple guys like Hunt and other guys around the program kinda raving about Collins and he seemed to always be mentioned like “now, don’t sleep on Collins. He’s getting everybody out in all the scrimmages.”

So I don’t know what the frick happened—but after the injuries, they NEEDED him to be a high leverage guy. I know it sucked when we didn’t have any lefties, but we only have 1 RHP that Jay trusts in the pen late in games, and he’s a true freshman who didn’t pitch in the fall and throws 70% “sliders.” (I know they call it that, but anything that sweeps 12-6 like that has always been a curve ball to me. Regardless, semantics). I guess you could call Hurd a pen piece cause he’s got the best stuff and Jay will go to him late in a game, but I think he clearly gets better the more he pitches and would be a starter any other year. Unfortunately, we don’t have that luxury with this team.

I’m nervous rambling an hour and a half before elimination game (the 1st of 3, hopefully) and have touched on more topics that I aimed too. I like Collins—I hope whatever detailed his season was more mechanical than mental and he can come back. I know Jay trusts (or trusted) him since he brought him with him from Arizona. But just think of how much difference our pen would be—even with the injuries—if we could count on Collins to come in and give a couple high leverage shutout innings every other game. It’s great to have lefties in the pen, but when they make up 80% of it and all have similar stuff, it loses its effectiveness. Would love to be able to work Collins in between some of them just to change their looks.

Anyway, my original point was not to bag on Collins or Dutton, but to underscore how important roster numbers are. We couldn’t survive the injuries along with getting basically nothing from Dutton, Collins, and Hellmers. At least Money throws strikes and was able to eat some midweek or blowout innings. And you had to take a chance on Little’s stuff.

Is there a hard cap at 40 next year? One more year of the “free COVID 5?” People don’t talk about the drastic impact that had on a lot of teams that played above their talent level because they had a bunch of 4th and 5th year guys that normally would have moved on. Think about how that helped this LSU team. Without those extra spots, I don’t think Jobert, Dugas, or Beloso are on this team.

TL;DR—roster spots are incredibly valuable. Jay is gonna have to make some hard processes on guys already here and maybe even some of the arms he grabs from the
portal—shite, Edwards almost didn’t make the team this year.