studentsect

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FPI is predisposed to hate LSU

They had LSU at #3 behind Ohio State and Clemson after the national championship game in 2019

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It's not anti-LSU, it's just heavily weighted to consistency over long periods of time and has trouble with LSU's almost-unique ability to shift from mediocre to elite on a moment's notice.

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25 we jsut do even keel. idk if I ever felt like we were obviously the best team in baseball, I also never felt like any team we played was better than us.

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23 seemed like it had a handful of guys who would have batted leadoff/cleanup for pretty much every other team in the country.

25 did not seem that way at all, more like it had two handfuls of guys who would've been like the 2nd through 5th best player on most teams. I feel like you could ask 20 fans to rank the top 5 hitters in order and you might get 20 different lists.

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I have always seen/heard it used as pitching someone other than your ordinary starters. Like if we had started Cowan or Shores in game one of the SEC Tournament or the Regional.

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I’d say “Pitching off” and “Pitching backwards” both mean throwing a lesser pitcher in Game 1 in order to maximize overall wins, but the success of “Pitching off” is determined based on whether or not you win that Game 1 whereas the success of “Pitching backwards” is determined by total number of wins in the series/tournament. This seems more like pitching backwards than pitching off (though really I think this is just a team that uses a rotation with its best pitcher throwing Game 2).

You “pitch off” to maximize your chances of going 2-0 and you “pitch backwards” to minimize your chances of going 0-2.

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They bypassed their game 1 guy in a regional format and again in a regional format.

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What is the evidence that he is their "game 1 guy"?

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I don’t think we are getting a lot of attention, but I don’t think that’s a sign of disrespect. It’s more about there are so many different story lines at this year’s CWS. Murray State being a 4 seed, Coastal’s winning streak, DVH having his chance to win his first one after many chances, no teams returning from last year, 3 former PAC 12 teams… We are just one story of many stories. I’m fine with not having the spot light focused on us and I think it’s good for the game to have so many diverse stories.

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This, plus this year's LSU team doesn't have the obvious superstars that 2023 team did (Skenes and Crews were both Golden Spikes finalists at this time two years ago).

Anderson was a semi-finalist and is very good, but (1) he's only a sophmore and this is his first year of really contributing so he hasn't had time to build a reputation and (2) it's not even clear that he's the best pitcher on the team.

Also, on the offensive side, if you're trying to list out the best hitters on the team the order is all over the place depending on what column you're sorting by.

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West Virginia walked (BB/HBP) 25 batters in 2 games.

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Tennessee walked (BB/HBP) 10 in Game 2.

Would you say that was a good performance that resulted in a battle-tested opponent, or that their "pitching was terrible" and "Nobody in the world can honestly say that [team] played well"?

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What I did say was that Arkansas has stepped its game up in the postseason because it had to with Tennessee coming in. LSU on the other hand didn't have to do that because WVU shite the bed.

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I don't think taking 2 from Tenn with one of those games being a blowout is as impressive as you seem to think it is. It's a feat that's been accomplished by everyone who has played Tenn since March other than Ole Miss.

Lost 2/2 to Arkansas, one game by 1, one by 7.
Lost 2/3 to Arkansas, one by 2 and one by 4.
Lost 2/3 to Vanderbilt, one by 2 and one by 5. (Also lost to Vanderbilt by 10 in the SECT).
Lost 2/3 to Auburn, one by 5 and one by 7.
Lost 2/3 to LSU, one by 6 and one by 10.
Lost 2/3 to UK, one by 3 and one by 6.
Lost 2/3 to A&M, one by 6 and one by 11.

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How on the world did this awful LSU team ever get to be ranked number 1, become a national seed, a favorite to win the natty and finish at the top of the SEC?

Reading this board, you would think LSU was UALR.

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Obviously "Our pitching has been suspect all year" is an exageration since two of our pitchers are near tops in the nation, but the number of times we have had a pitcher walk back-to-back or near back-to-back batters with pitches that are not competitive feels staggering.

It seems like when it comes to strikes, "good" balls (i.e, balls that the crowd thinks should have been called a strike and could have reasonably expected to generate a swing), and just plain terrible pitches not near the intended location, we have had a glaring number of the latter from pitchers that were expected to be major contributers this season.

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Without Friday's rotation this is a middle of the pack SEC team.

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I mean yeah, every middle of the pack SEC team would be vastly improved if you magically gave it one extra game worth of elite pitching.

Pretty clear that the computers are unable to properly calculate the impact of healthy Caden Durham and Zy Alexander (and to a certain extent gamebreaking Whit Weeks) bc the sample size is still too small.

LSU is legitimately not the same team from a personnel perspective that it was for the first few weeks of the season but it’s hard to write a formula to account for that.