re: LSU should face former Tiger Cameron Johnson on Thursday night

I think the "hope" here is around this time last season he fell apart at OU and barely pitched the rest of the season; last weekend was an indication that could be happening again to him.

At IMG he never got much work, think his last season there he threw 20 something innings all season. He's never had a high workload and now they are trying to get 80-100 pitches out of him every single week competitively and he could be hitting a wall once again like last year just getting too tired where his mechanics get out of whack and he cant throw strikes consistently.

I watched the wheels highlights of his start this past weekend and he actually got to a lot of 3-2 counts but the ball 4 misses were almost always WAY WAY off, like not even remotely competitive. I even saw 1 (or 2?) strikeouts on what should have been easily ball 4's batters just swung at.

Approach is always to be patient pretty much and that will remain true going against Cam this week I imagine

looking at his A&M outing, here's how it went:

1st inning

walk (3-2)
4 pitch walk
line drive off the wall for a double (3-1), 1 run scored
walk (3-2)
chopper to third, thrown away at home (0-2), 2 runs scored
hard hit ball right at Cam, hit off his leg, FC, run scores (1-1)
hard hit ground ball right at first baseman (1-1), runners hold at 2nd and 3rd
wild pitch, another run scores
walk (3-2)
fly out to right (3-2)

43 pitches, 24 balls, 19 strikes, 4 BBs, 1 H, 4 runs

Inning 2:
Strikeout chased way out of the zone on a fastball (3-2)
groundout (1-0)
walk on a wild pitch (3-2)
walk way outside (3-2)
strikeout looking, good pitch on the black (0-2)

23 pitches, 12 balls,11 strikes, 2 BBs, 0 H, 0 runs

Inning 3:
flyout to left (3-2)
4 pitch walk
end of outing
Next batter hits a double to the gap off the wall, runner scores, charged to Cam

10 pitches, 7 balls, 3 strikes, 1 BB, 1 run


Totals: 76 pitches, 43 balls, 33 strikes, 7 BBs, 2 Ks, 1 H, 5 R

This basically tracks his struggles his entire career. His OppBA has always been low. It was .167 his first year at LSU, .237 last year, and is just .207 this year. But he just has no command on the mound. His stuff has always been there. Maybe he's improved and last week was just a bad day, or maybe the OOC schedule was just an outlier and he's returned to the mean. I guess we'll see. But seeing as our hitters, if they do anything well, they try to work counts. We lead the SEC in free passes this season. If this trend continues and Cam is still wild, he may not last long.

quote:

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I bet you don’t/can’t answer

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Cameron's is a big guy like Skenes and his reported velocity was upper 90s.

As for his mechanics, IDK specifics if that's what you're asking. But if you've watched him throw, nothing looks smooth, fluid..

LOL, he will throw all strikes against us, and walk no one.