'23 Lineup + '26 Pitching Staff - How Far Do They Get?

The defense and offense on that team were far better. But the amount of free bases we give up has been mind boggling. Hard for the best offenses to overcome that.

26 lineup with 23 pitching staff. How far do they get?

23 team after losing top two pitchers and top hitter, how far do they get?

In your scenario, does LSU lose its Friday and Saturday starters for half of the SEC schedule?

Does this team finish better if they don't lose Cooper Moore? Are the last few series closer with Jake Brown in the lineup?

So much to consider in hypotheticals. Does it affect the psyche of hitters if they feel like the pitching will keep them in the game, and they do not have to carry the team every night? Are the pitchers more relaxed if they feel like the defense will handle any batted balls put into play, therefore less prone to throw wild pitches, hit batters, etc.?

Brother this horrid pitching staff would derail a season that even an all star lineup mixed from the 97, 00, 09 and 23 LSU teams couldn’t even overcome. That’s how bad this pitching staff is. Oh LSU scored 6 runs that inning? Ok we gonna go out there and walk 8 batters, hit 2 and give up 7 runs in the bottom half while making Jay has to mow through about 5 pitchers in one inning just to get out of it.

You can’t win anything significant with pitching this bad

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26 lineup with 23 pitching staff. How far do they get?

23 team after losing top two pitchers and top hitter, how far do they get?

In your scenario, does LSU lose its Friday and Saturday starters for half of the SEC schedule?

Does this team finish better if they don't lose Cooper Moore? Are the last few series closer with Jake Brown in the lineup?

So much to consider in hypotheticals. Does it affect the psyche of hitters if they feel like the pitching will keep them in the game, and they do not have to carry the team every night? Are the pitchers more relaxed if they feel like the defense will handle any batted balls put into play, therefore less prone to throw wild pitches, hit batters, etc.?

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Completely agree. Everything affects everything. Impossible to know. With that offense, this pitching staff is probably better.
Not nearly as much pressure would have been on them. Especially if we had the ‘23 defense.
Not excusing the ‘26 staff, but our offensive woes in the middle of the season, our terrible defense, and our terrible catching—which I do think got better towards the end of the year—had to affect the psyche of the staff and how Yeskie called pitches. They felt like they had to be perfect and that pressure made a lot of them wilt. Lead to a lot of walks and HBPs.
And missing over the plate where they got punished. But how much it affected them? No way to tell. What we saw this year may just be closer to who they are and as good as they were capable of.

Also, I think Skenes and Floyd dominating in Omaha has made people forget just how average that staff was outside of Skenes.
I want to say we won every game Floyd started, but that stat is taken out of context.
He struggled mightily during the regular season. But he was picked up by that ridiculous offense just outslugging everybody once we got past their Friday night guys and deeper into their bullpens. (I may be wrong, but I’d bet Floyd got significantly more run support than Skenes).

And we wouldn’t have won with that staff if it weren’t for some guys stepping up and doing incredible things they hadn’t been doing in the regular season. Now, part of that was due to
the ridiculous amount of injuries we had to
several bullpen arms that were set to be our backend guys. With no injuries, that team may have run through the SEC and entire postseason with ease and been considered one of the best teams in college baseball history.

I will say that a very fair criticism of Jay this year was counting so much on Cooper Moore not getting injured. He was good, and it was going to hurt some no matter what if he went
down, but losing a Cooper Moore and the trickle down effect can’t be enough to ruin an entire season. I’m sure he missed on some other guys he’d have loved to have gotten,
but he gambled too much on Moore not getting hurt, and 2 second year guys in Evans and Schmidt making huge jumps in new roles.
You’ve got to be prepared for an injury or 2. And we really didn’t have bad injury luck overall. The Moore injury just magnified it because he was being so heavily counted on.

To be fair, though, I don’t think Jay wanted to set it up like that. He either didn’t have enough money or time to evaluate and get the guys this team needed. He’ll adjust, though.

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Going back to that ‘23 staff not being as good as we might remember, they had the highest ERA of any of Jay’s LSU teams besides this ‘26 one. And that was WITH Skenes. Of course this staff had an ERA over a run higher than that ‘23 staff.

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One thing to consider there is that was 3 years after the 5 Round Draft. So it was about as loaded a talent year for college baseball as we've ever seen.

And it bore out in Omaha, and then the glut of players from Omaha that made the majors within 2 years of being drafted.