About Cam Johnson:

Anyone that is seriously worried is just not cut out for following baseball.

Not worried at all. He will be a force but it won’t be this year.

No worries. He’s obviously distracted by the moment.

He was just a greased needle today. He will be fine.

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What the kid needs is the desire to work.

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This makes it sound like you don't think he has shown a desire to work?

He's raw, and/or was nervous today. Still, like Big Ben said, Milazzo was dropping several of his strikes so he's got some late movement. Which on a 95 mph lefty is sick.

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What the kid needs is the desire to work. He came here with a shot ton of talent and a just maybe the attitude to match.

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He didn’t get here by walking 3 guys an inning. You don’t lose the strike zone by being lazy/cocky. He was nervous for a first appearance.

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he is going to kick the shite out of college hitters

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Certainly. He throws gas with (too much) movement. He’ll have it figured out soon.

You could see he was nervous. Several players tried to calm him down. He’s going to be just fine

LSU fans (shoot, all fans) are tone deaf when it comes to expectations. It’s one of the reasons I’ve really started to hate people that dig into recruiting rankings. The media & entrepreneurs have really preyed upon these people.

In the end, Cam Johnson is just another baseball player to come to lsu. We’ve seen 5 top-ranked guys bust & small town players become stars. Give the kid some grace. He was never going to walk in & be Randy Johnson.

Gonna be fun watching this young man as he learns to "pitch" and this staff works to get him there.

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(too much) movement.

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No such thing. I do agree that catching him is going to be an adjustment even for the great catchers we have. I think Milazzo cost him a handful of strikes and not just the couple he missed. He reached late for a few that were probably strikes, but fooled the ump because of how they fooled Alex.

This is no criticism of Milazzo at all. It's gonna take some time for all the catchers to get on the same page as Cam and get used to the flight of his fastball. Not only does it have late movement, but because he's so big and releases the ball closer to the plate than most pitchers, his fastball plays faster than it actually is. 94 probably looks closer to 98 as far as reaction time.

I agree with Les that the expectations heaped on this cat so early are a bit unfair. You could tell that with some of the a-hole posts in the game-thread. But I don't agree with some of the other posters who think he's so raw they're ready to go ahead and write him off for this season. He needs time to develop (and "grace" from the fans as Les said), but I think there's plenty of time to have him ready to come in and get some big outs in big situations down the SEC stretch and into the post-season. He will be a big piece of this staff by the time it matters. He's not that far off.

And a lot of times, it's harder to throw strikes when you have a huge lead and you know that's all you have to do. Even for veteran pitchers. Considering today was his collegiate debut and the added nerves, and I don't think we can take a whole lot away from it. Not negatively at least. I thought his movement was really nice positive surprise, though.