re: Rate Jay Johnson’s first season

I think really good. A-. We got post season play, won 17 SEC games, with a pieced together pitching staff. They were much better at the plate this year. Still a long way to go with hitting but much improved.

Hey I still believe all these pitchers were all quality in high school and I know JJ and our chubby pitching coach didn’t get a lot of time with them but by season end should have had minimum 3 guys you could trust and it never happened

B- is a fair grade

I mean , we finished second in the conference in every hitting category and number one was a historic team . Bitching about the hitting is a bit much for me

C-

Not ready to fire him by any means, but my expectations were higher, particularly with pitching and fielding. Looking at all 3 phases:

Fielding was better in the regional on paper but our corner outfielders still played poorly, especially in last night’s game and there were still some errors on the infield. For the season it was a D- leading the conference in errors.

Pitching was horrible. As gutsy and surprisingly successful as Hilliard was, he’s no ace. We never developed an ace. Ty Floyd had a decent turn around but money fell off the map. Gervase was a good closer but he shite the bed at the worst time. All of manieri’s guys did what they usually do, one good performance and then one bad one. Cooper was serviceable but nothing special. Reyzelman lost the last two games single-handedly with help from a poorly called game from our pitching coach. All that work in the fall and spring and you can’t develop a second pitch and actually call that pitch? Grade D.

The hitting was good enough to win this regional. But the guys we expected to be able to hit, hit. And the ones that couldn’t at the start of the season didn’t. Credit to Johnson for inserting Pearson as a mainstay but no one else stepped up and dugas just never was at a full go….I guess. The bottom of the lineup, McManus and Bianco and Stevenson and Joubert killed us this regional. The bottoms of the lineup for each team were the difference. Theirs produced, ours didn’t. Grade B-

Overall C-

Johnson better keep some of this recruiting class. He’s got to find at least 8 new pitchers unless some of these freshmen make dramatic improvements and injured guys come back to full health.

B. Starting pitching was really bad. No ace. Hilliard is a Sunday guy at best on most staffs and he was the best starting pitcher this year. I’m surprised LSU won as much as they did. Thank god the bats were good and fielding was bad. I love the class he has signed curious who makes it to campus

quote:

---

I would give him a B. He won 17 SEC games without one above starting pitcher. LSU had to overachieve to be in the position it was in during this regional. Just couldn't finish it off. You can blame a lot of things...but when you have to score 10 runs a game to win, it puts too much stress on the batters.

---

Same. For what they had to work with, I think the pitching was great. I think there's way more to the Money injury than we know but even then the guy wasn't a starter but unfortunately had to step in to a Friday night role. Hope we can hold onto Kelly.

Offense was fanfriggintastic. Honestly no complaints here. The change in approach was great and JJ seemed to always make the right call.

The fielding errors were bad but I think that one REALLY bad stretch got in their heads and just exacerbated it. Didn't seem to cost us as many games later in the season.

I honestly thought this team was .500 in conference play going into the season. There's talent but it is top heavy and there isn't much in the way of arms. That said I have full confidence in JJ going forward.

Honestly it is a B+. He won games he shouldn’t have and lost games he shouldn’t have, but he did that despite not have a true ace (no disrespect to Hilliard. Most of his pitching decisions worked out throughout the year and the bull pen did work.

It all fell apart in the regional and our bull pen underperformed drastically and bats went ice cold. He performed better than I expected all things considered, but he better show up next year having us hosting a regional at least in the conversation to be a national seed to.

Hard to tell, working with Pauls class. Average i’d say. We’ll see next year when he has some of his own guys