3 Things That Stood Out In LSU Baseball's Final Series Of Regular Season

LSU is in a new realm. It's final series against Florida, in which the Tigers were swept, was unfamiliar.

"I've never coached a series [before this weekend] that did not matter in terms of postseason ramifications for our team in my entire coaching career. Maybe my first year in Nevada," LSU head coach Jay Johnson said after Friday's loss. "But other than that, this is like Pluto."

But the postseason starts now. Johnson said that the SEC tournament, which will start Tuesday in Hoover, Ala. with LSU facing Oklahoma at 8 p.m. CT, is this team's postseason and will be treated like any game in a regional, super regional or the College World Series.

LSU needs to win five games in six days to make the NCAA Tournament, and its recent SEC series haven't showed that they stand a chance. Against Florida, these three things stood out as LSU approaches Hoover.

Florida stacking crooked numbers

LSU Tigers catcher Cade Arrambide (0) runs against the Southeastern Louisiana Lions at Alex Box Stadium. | Matthew Hinton-Imagn Images

Florida scored in 14 of 25 offensive innings. In 10, they scored more than one run, which includes six innings of at least three runs as well. Overall, the Gators scored 37 runs in the series.

All three games against Florida were glorified bullpen games, but that doen't make the scene for Hoover any brighter. For LSU to run the table, it will have to pitch for 45 innings, a task that will be almost insurmountable even with the starters back.

LSU was missing its entire starting rotation, as Casan Evans is still healing from an arm injury and came in in relief Friday, Cooper Moore has missed most of the season with an elbow injury and William Schmidt is being saved for Tuesday.

"I don't want to play the Florida Gators without my starting rotation ever again," Johnson said. "That is not a good fight to be in."

Schmidt and Evans will be good to go in Hoover, but the innings to be picked up by everyone else are still a crapshoot.

Free passes have to be cut down

"The totality is, there's still swing and miss stuff, if you will," Johnson said Saturday. "But there's too many walks, there's too many hit batters, there's too many wild pitches. And we can't get off the field when we need to. When we score, we give up runs immediately."

All of these free passes are getting mixed in with the 35 earned runs LSU pitchers allowed to Florida.

"[Cleaning up free bases] is part of good baseball, clean baseball, and it starts on the mound," Johnson said Friday. "That's your offensive line. [If] your offensive line sucks, you suck. You've got to control the strike zone."

This has been one of, if not the biggest issue for LSU all year. Over the Florida series, Tiger pitchers walked 23 batters and hit seven. And to add onto the 30 free passes, the staff also threw seven wild pitches in a year where that has plagued them.

LSU has never found the strike zone well and it continues to haunt it in the biggest moments. It's leading to LSU struggling to get three outs, which will be the biggest worry as pitchers get stretched thin in Hoover.

LSU's offense isn't much to worry about

LSU has scored at least eight runs in seven of its last nine SEC losses. While that stat says a lot about the pitching staff, it also proves that the offense isn't lagging behind with it.

"I've always used [the baseline of] if we score seven on offense, that's usually produced wins 80-plus percent of the time," Johnson said Saturday. "We've screwed that stat up completely this year."

Both Cade Arrambide and Mason Braun are in the top 10 in the SEC for batting average in SEC games. Arrambide hit two home runs Saturday against Florida, and shortstop Steven Milam added a homer in each game of the series.

The Tigers overall are right at the middle of the pack in almost every offensive team stat in SEC play. It should be enough for LSU to have more than nine conference wins, but that isn't the case with how the pitching has gone.

"We just have to put it all together," Arrambide said. "Everyone's got to be ready to go in Hoover."

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