re: Central AR 3 @ LSU 4 Final

Thanks Cheer...4-0 great start Tigers ??

Ooooh. I wish I had that glass of Cheerwine. I love it.

Appreciate ya Cheer

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list of teams with a 5 game winning streak: LSU

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I like it

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There is no way a team can win in Omaha with a shortstop that can’t get a hit.

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Hey, come on now, I think JT wound up getting a hit or 2 in the championship game.

But your point--and a few others with the same sentiment--is true. A SS who is great defensively is going to get some leash at the plate. And 4 games is a ridiculously small sample size to judge on. And 2 other things I think are going to allow him a little grace.

1, they've changed his swing. I think his swing at SC was more about hitting the top of the baseball and trying to hit line drives or hard ground balls. But Jay thought he had some untapped power and has him working on trying to drive the ball and get it in the air a bit more, to increase his launch angle. Pretty drastic change, and will take a while to get the muscle memory re-trained. 2, he's a transfer, who Jay had to convince to leave SC and come to LSU. I don't think he promised him the starting SS job all season no matter what, but I'm sure he promised him to give him 1st crack and to give him some time to adjust to new swing.

And when coaches make promises like that, they have to keep him for the next guys he recruits, whether he's their transfers from the portal or high school kids with other offers from big schools or high school kids who are projected to be drafted relatively high. Kids and coaches talk, and Jay doesn't want to get the reputation of making big promises to get kids to Baton Rouge only to go back on them.

BUT, I do think he's eventually gonna wind up having to hit to stay in the lineup. I think he will, but if he doesn't, as good as this lineup can be, I don't think it can absorb a black hole in the lineup like maybe last year's could. Jones and Kling are streaky and are probably gonna have extended stretches where their bats go cold. Pearson had a rough start to both his freshman and sophomore seasons before turning it on. You've got to think that as great as Milam and Brown look now, they're still freshmen and will likely struggle a bit at times.

Which is just baseball, it's a long season and almost everybody goes through it at some point. But we can't have any of those guys struggling AND Braswell not providing anything at the plate at the same time. Will make it easier to pitch around Tanks and Trav.

tl;dr--I think Braswell is probably pressing a bit--there's a lot of pressure being the LSU short stop--and he's still working on a new swing and approach. But his glove is so good that Jay's gonna give him a lot of rope. But there will come a time where if he's just not giving us any production at the plate whatsoever, Milam may wind up taking that SS job. I am not predicting it nor do I think it will happen or want it to happen. But the possibility is on the table down the road.

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Yes it is, I hope they start selling it in Louisiana. Tight one today, but we ended up 4-0 on the weekend, I'll take that any day.

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I missed the game. How was the melt?

And thanks for what you do bud. Even When I miss the game, it's nice to know you're here.

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I just want to caution everyone that we haven’t seen Milam face elite pitching yet either.

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That's the case for a third of our lineup, while we haven't seen another third of our lineup (Braswell, Jones, Kling) have consistent success against SEC pitching yet.

It's always funny this time of year to see all these football fans live and die by every pitch while the baseball fans know damn well that we won't know much of anything about this team until we're 2 or 3 weeks into SEC play.

Right now, even the Houston trip, is about getting as many guys as many reps as possible and keeping the pitching healthy.