LSU Baseball Outlines Plan for Starting Pitchers for Opening Week
For 10 days, all LSU starting pitcher Landon Marceaux could do was sit in his room and grow more and more frustrated about not being with his team just weeks before the 2021 season opener.
Marceaux and his roommate, AJ Labas, were confined to their rooms and there was real question as to whether they'd be ready for opening weekend on Feb. 19 against Air Force, Notre Dame and Louisiana Tech. Both returned to the practice field earlier this week and feel ready for their opening matchups.
Coach Paul Mainieri layed out his vision for how the program plans to utilize its three starting pitchers opening weekend. Mainieri hopes to get three innings out of ace starter Jaden Hill, 4-5 innings out of Marceaux on Saturday and potentially 5-6 out of Labas on Sunday in the finale.
LSU's in a unique position with its pitching staff, yet not so different from other SEC programs. For example, despite being ranked in the preseason top 10 by numerous polls, the Tigers were voted to finish No. 4 in SEC Western Division by the conference coaches on Thursday.
"If you don't have three quality starting pitchers like we have, you can't compete in the SEC this year," Mainieri said. "This league is gonna be filled with first round pitchers. I think all three of our starters are capable of matching up with a really great pitcher on the other team and hold them to a low run game. It gives us a great fighting chance to win each day."
That directly points to the caliber of talent, particularly with the pitching in the SEC heading into 2021 season and Hill, Marceaux and Labas are as good as they come. All three of LSU's talented starters have been working this offseason on various aspects of their game.
Hill talked about wanting to give 110% on every pitch and every inning that he's thrown out on the mound. One of the fastest arms in the entire country, he's got top five pick written all over him and believes the training he's put into his body this offseason will allow him to keep that high velocity and last longer in games as a starter.
As for the junior Marceaux, who's entering his third year as a starter, the one area he worked the most on this offseason was finding consistency. After a year between his freshman and sophomore year working on his body, Marceaux knew how crucial finding consistency in his pitching was to having success in 2021.
"The more consistent you are in your mechanics and your diet, consistency in the weight room, all of that coming together get you more consistent with every outing," Marceaux said. "It allows coach to know what he's getting out of me and that's really important to me. Not trying to do way too much and not trying to be something that I'm not. My velo's jumped just being who I am and commanding the zone with four or five pitches."
Labas has had an arduous last few seasons in Baton Rouge, missing all of 2019 with an injury and then watching the 2020 season cancelled right when SEC play was set to begin. He returns to be the Sunday starter, which is a challenge in its own right.
Those Sunday starters are the ones that will dictate whether a team win's a series, sweeps a series or is the team getting swept on a given weekend. He's spent the offseason focusing on the positives, which include another opportunity to return as an elite level SEC pitcher that he showed early signs of way back in 2018 as a true freshman.
"He's got that veteran presence about him, he's just the consumate pitcher," Mainieri said. "The big thing for AJ is to stay healthy and pitch the way that he can. I just feel very confident that AJ is going to be an outstanding pitcher for us this year."
Both Marceaux and Labas feel ready to take on whatever workload is asked of them on opening week. Traditionally, Mainieri has liked to take the first few weeks to get his starting pitchers back into game rhythm by not throwing them more than five innings, which seems to be the approach again this season.
"If we were to lose guys for 10 days, those are the two guys who could adapt most quickly to being back and probably have the least effect on," Mainieri said. "They both look extremely sharp, they just came back and looked really good."
All three starters say there's healthy competition between the three because they know that there are 17 other pitchers on the staff who are ready to take their positions if they start to slip.
"Me and Landon are always talking about pitching and how to throw certain pitches," Labas said. "We're helping each other out with movement and talking about each other's arm mecahnics. For us it's always competitive but we all want to see each other succeed.