re: Jay Johnson always pitches his ace in game 1 of a regional

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If you lose, you obviously pitch off vs. the #4 and then go to war needing to win 3 in a row still having your top 2 aces.

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Do you, though? I realize it’s a 4-seed but can you imagine the melt if we got eliminated throwing our midweek staff without even putting Jump or Holman on the mound?

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you’re 0-1 after a bullpen game, you aren’t going to hold Jump/Holman back again in the 2 losers’ bracket games. Which means you’ll need to beat UNC twice with a depleted bullpen.. at a pitching disadvantage.

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You’d definitely hold those guys against the 4 seed. You don’t pitch off in game time without the intent of saving those guys.

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I would save Jump and Holman and pitch Hurd.

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In the 5 years that he made it to the NCAA tournament at Arizona and LSU, he has always pitched his ace in game 1.

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Just wait till we host again and it’s a SWAC team anyone on the staff can beat

This is largely a ridiculous debate mostly because we are looking for something to discuss before Friday. All you need to know is this:

Jump has started every game 1, including in the SEC Tournament, starting with the Tennessee series

Johnson, and everyone else, will tell you they feel LSU has played their best ball since that UT sweep.

But for the fielding/bullpen meltdown vs. Alabama, LSU would have won every game Jump started since the Tenn. series.

Now, as LSU enters the playoffs, Johnson is not going to suddenly change what has been working...even though the Rant has crunched the numbers and is certain this LSU behemoth (who wasn't even sure they were going to make the NCAA Tournament a week ago) can sleepwalk through Wofford.

The only way Jump doesn't pitch Friday (barring injury) is if Johnson decides Holman is a MUCH better matchup vs. Wofford. And even that seems like a very remote possibility. At this point, 61 games into the season, the lineups are set with the one exception being center field that might be subject to change

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I'm also not scared of being 1-1 if we still have Jump or Holman

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There is a major difference between needing to win 3 of 4 games and having to win 4 of 5 games to advance.

In the first scenario you need to go 1-1 on Sunday and Monday without your top 2 starters.

In the second scenario you need to go 2-1 on Sunday and Monday. That's a lot to ask across 2 days.

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That’s emotional thinking. Of course there will be a ton of criticism. We’ve got a ton of idiots in our fan base. But the logical people will recognize that if the rest of the staff couldn’t beat the 3 or the 4, you weren’t going to beat UNC with that staff.

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Forget the fans.

Justify to your team whose season just ended why they are going home with you, as the manager, choosing to forego throwing the two best pitchers on the team.

This whole argument is premised on the assumption LSU can easily roll over Wofford despite the fact that: (1) It's not uncommon for 3 seeds to beat 2 seeds. In fact, 10 of the 16 3 seeds WON the matchup in the 2022 tournament; (2) over the course of 56 games it was still very much up in the air if LSU was even good enough to make the NCAA Tournament.

Now they are suddenly good enough to a reasonable degree of certainty to beat a solid team solely with an, at best, inconsistent bullpen?

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You’d definitely hold those guys against the 4 seed. You don’t pitch off in game time without the intent of saving those guys.

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So you take a chance of neither Jump or Holman pitching in the regional? If Jay did that (and he won't) he'd deserve every bit of criticism he got.

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if we lose either of their starts we're probably not going to win the regional anyway.

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Agreed.