How Many Pitchers on the Current Staff Have Pitched in Omaha? Regionals?

CWS(25) - Cowan, Evans, Noot, and Williams

Super(25) - Cowan, Evans, Noot, Williams, Primeaux, and Rizy

Regional(25) - Cowan, Evans, Noot, Williams, Primeaux, Rizy, and Schmidt

2023 was only Guidry

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What the heck happened?

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I can give you some opinions based on very little concrete evidence.

Guidry - I still believe Guidry had a back/core injury and has lost a little something as a result. He doesn't look quite as sharp.

Evans, Schmidt, Williams, and Rizy are all sophomores.

I think Schmidt has been generally better this year than last.

Except for Schmidt, they all look at least a little like the dreaded sophomore slump.

Rizy has the same issues he has, except we see bad Rizy a little more this season. He has the issues guys his size often have, difficulty with repeatability on pitches, because small arm angle changes for a guy 6' 9" equate to larger location differences than say a guy 6' 5".

Evans has seemingly regressed, but mostly in pitch placement. He still strikes out a lot of guys, but he walks too many and sometimes leaves meatballs over the plate.

Williams still looks like he has so much potential, but he hasn't produced in tight spots.

Cowan has been decent, but, this year, he does sometimes struggle with placement and has hung his curveball a time or two. He's a pitch-to-contact/induce a swing-and-miss type of pitcher, so struggling with placement is problematic.

Primeaux and Noot, for whatever reason, have not gotten much time on the mound.

Noot has pitched 9 total innings, facing 42 batters.

Primeaux has only pitched 2 total innings and faced 11 batters.

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The only other mention would be that Evans was primarily a bullpen pitcher last year. Coming in as a Friday night starter may have been too big if a transition.

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I get why people say that, but he came into games in high-leverage situations all the time. So pressure should not be a factor. The concern with a bullpen guy is always the second time through the lineup. But many, maybe most, of Evan's struggles have been earlier than that. I don't really get it either, if I'm being honest.

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It’s a different approach to pitching as a starter much less a Friday starter.

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That is true

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Teams come in with their plan for what to do at the plate still fresh in their minds.

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That may be the biggest thing. Though not so much that it is fresh, but that it is more significantly planned for coming into the game.If you're as good as Anderson or Eyanson, much less Skenes, that has little impact unless you can hit on multiple pitches often enough early to get them guessing and take them out of their game plan.

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What the heck happened?

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Noot has always been hit and miss. He’s just been almost all miss this season.

Evans, Williams and Guidry are easier to explain. They were in more limited roles in the past and have been asked to do more this season and weren’t able to handle it. Guidry is frankly pretty limited. He may just be what he is at this point. Evans and Williams seem to have a lot more upside, but they have to fix their consistency and mental approach to get back to what they were.

We all know Evans doesn’t suck, despite what the idiots and trolls here say, but he definitely hasn’t been able to handle starting like he approached being a high-leverage reliever and closer last year. He doesn’t have close to the same confidence in his stuff in this role. Williams was a late riser last year who was expected to be a high-leverage guy like Cowan. He also just couldn’t handle the step up. Maybe Yeskie asked more of him than what he was ready for, but he definitely looked ready from what we saw last postseason.

Cowan is the same guy he was last year. He’s the most consistent pitcher on this staff. He just got figured out midway through last season and has the slimmest margin for error since his fastball is pretty average. If his breaking balls aren’t perfect, he can have a bad outing. And If he isn’t 100% on, he’s going to be hit by good teams like we saw yesterday. But because he’s been the only consistent reliever, he’s been put into most of the toughest spots, especially lately. Fontenot and Sheerin were up to some of these at times earlier in the year, but both have been off lately, forcing Cowan to the firing squad more than should have been necessary.

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Wes Johnson seemingly was the reason for Guidry's success one year 23. Yeskie made him worse, much worse, and LSU needed his 23 arm badly this year.

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Or Guidry was coming off of back surgery that affected his throwing motion and he hasn't been able to return to pre-surgery form.

But yes, with our pitching woes, having the 23 Guidry would have been a helluva lot better.

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Wes Johnson seemingly was the reason for Guidry's success one year 23. Yeskie made him worse, much worse, and LSU needed his 23 arm badly this year.

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I think he's a better pitcher now - added a new pitch to his repertoire and his velocity is better. Why he's getting a bad rap is because we are extending him beyond his factory settings.

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Wes Johnson seemingly was the reason for Guidry's success one year 23. Yeskie made him worse, much worse, and LSU needed his 23 arm badly this year.

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Guidry's best statistical season was in 2024 under Yeskie

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The downfalls of Williams and Rizy this year is just mind boggling to me.

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Rizy is really interesting to me. He's got a better K rate, better BB rate, better ERA, same oppBA as last year, which should indicate he's better, right?

He's hit nearly double the amount of guys and his oppSLG is 150 points higher.

He didn't improve, clearly. He also didn't fully regress. He went about as sideways as possible.

ETA: My opinion on Williams has been shared a lot already, but I think he was smoke & mirrors last year and this year is somewhat of a regression to the mean. But this year is probably also not fully representative of his true talent either. He, along with the entire rest of the staff, acquired and aversion to throwing strikes.

Well, who else is it on? 3 years at LSU and all 3 years similar problems with his pitching staff. The difference is they put it on the back half of last season and in his first year they were coming around in the regionals until he decided to blow the game with 12 straight pitch calls that were identical.

All his pitchers have regressed last year except 1 on a CWS team. Explain to me how it's not on his shoulders? Because he's a pitching coach that has accolades in the past? His not calling pitch to contact is a major problem with our pitchers in the pitch sequence.

You can't be this bad at LSU this year without looking directly at coaching.