LSU Baseball's Cade Beloso Not Losing Confidence In Middle of Hitting Slump
Cade Beloso sometimes just has to smile and shake his head when he trots back to the dugout. LSU's most veteran hitter is currently in the middle of the worst slump of his career but with only five strikeouts on the season, most of his struggles at the plate stem from bad luck.
Beloso is hitting a career low .224 with one home run and 14 RBI but has drawn 15 walks to the five strikeouts, which is a sign of a great hitter. He's getting the bat on the ball but he's not finding the holes and the junior hitter admitted that he hasn't quite felt like himself this year.
"We've been trying to fix this as soon as possible and I think the key is applying what Coach [Paul] Mainieri and Coach [Eddie] Smith have been working with me on," Beloso said.
On Monday, after another frusterating weekend for Beloso at the plate that led to freshman Brody Drost earning a spot start against Mississippi State on Sunday, Mainieri, Smith and Beloso all had a meeting to go over film from Beloso's freshman season to see where the differences were.
They locked in on a couple of different areas in Beloso's mechanics that could help his performance at the plate moving forward.
"The biggest thing for me is just continuing to swing hard," Beloso said. "We went back and watched film from my first year when I was here and made some mechanical tweaks and getting back to doing what I do best and that's hitting the ball hard."
Some of the mechanical tweaks the trio noticed was Beloso's hands were a little to high on the bat, causing him to lose a bat speed. He was also blocking himself off on his lower half which wasn't allowing him to turn his hips quickly when he was swinging.
As a result he's lowered his hands on the bat and also opened up his stance a little bit and went out on Monday and had the best batting practice in months according to Mainieri. The Tigers' head coach said that he has no intentions of giving up on Beloso, who he believes will be integral to the championship hopes this team has.
"I'm not giving up on Cade Beloso I can assure you of that. I think he's a great competitor and I know what he's capable of doing," Mainieri said. "I feel that we're on to something and that Cade feels better about himself today than he did a couple of days ago. I don't think we can win a championship with out Beloso being a major factor in it."
Throughout the struggles, Beloso hasn't lost confidence and knows that the only way to break out of the slump is to keep swinging the bat and the law of averages will take care of the rest.
"I can't let this alter my confidence and I try not to think about it too much. I see the numbers unfortunately on our big scoreboard but you gotta let it go and know that eventually you're gonna get out of this," Beloso said. "The law of averages evens everything out and I know I'm gonna get out of this and I'm glad coach Mainieri and all of the coaches have confidence in me."
Photo courtesy of LSUsports.