BATON ROUGE, La. — Jay Johnson had just finished another one of those sit-down interviews for another one of those preseason stories on another one of those years with so much hype. He shook hands and started to walk out of his large LSU office, but then he wanted to talk a little college football — in February. He wanted to talk about a story he read in The Athletic about Nick Saban.
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Johnson loves Saban. Yeah, he coaches baseball at LSU, but he’s a Saban guy. He read his book. He studied him when he was younger. He tries to learn what he can from one of the greatest coaching minds of his generation.
And Saban is a thinker. He’s a planner. He’s maybe the most detail-oriented, process-obsessed coach in sports. That’s the kind of stuff that excites Johnson, the 46-year-old in his second season at LSU.
One thing Johnson appreciates about Saban: He won one national title game by starting the second half with an onside kick, and he won another by benching his starting quarterback at halftime for a true freshman. The key to taking risks is to make sure the decision is based on so much planning and information that it’s not really a risk at all.
See y'all in the Supers#ThePowerhouse pic.twitter.com/9uool92RSo
— LSU Baseball (@LSUbaseball) June 5, 2023
That leads us to the risky decision Johnson made this past weekend. To the NCAA Regional Johnson just won Monday, beating Oregon State, 13-7, to finish off the three-game sweep. To the thousands of LSU fans who thought he was not in his right mind as he made such a strange choice in such a big moment.
The decision? Johnson decided to pitch his All-American ace, Paul Skenes, the national player of the year, in Game 1 on Friday against a 19-40 Tulane team. Many coaches save their best pitcher for the Saturday game against the supposed better team in the winners bracket of the Regional. Especially coaches who have a pitching staff that, outside of Skenes, is quite scrutinized.
But Johnson pitched Skenes on Friday. Against a team LSU was nearly certain to beat. Skenes pitched all nine innings in a 7-2 win. And Johnson declined to talk about it. Until Monday. Until LSU had advanced to the Super Regional it hosts next weekend against Kentucky for a chance to advance the College World Series.
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These are the rare glances into what makes Johnson tick.
“This is always one of my favorite weeks of the year,” he said. “And I love the preparation part of it. Once we got the bracket, we started looking at each team and maybe where the potential trouble spots, problems might arise.”
He runs scenarios. He goes through every possibility. Every analytical projection. Fans may have gripes with Johnson, but they cannot say he is making uninformed decisions. He saw a team that was still learning how to win. Still learning how to make a trip to Omaha. LSU has won six national titles in the last 32 years but hasn’t reached the College World Series since 2017.
“I thought it would help the team settle into the postseason,” he said.
But there’s a little more to it. He saw the weather forecasts. OK, he really looked into the weather.
“I have some underground sources,” he said, “that I used all of them.”
He remembered that in 2016, while he was still still at Arizona, LSU’s Regional didn’t finish until Tuesday because of weather. He knew there was a significant chance Saturday’s game would be delayed. And pitching Skenes only to have a weather delay shorten his outing would be potentially catastrophic for LSU.
And that’s exactly what happened. Saturday’s game against Oregon State was pushed to Sunday because of weather. LSU pitched Ty Floyd, and in the top of the third, the game was delayed for three hours. Floyd couldn’t return.
It worked out. Thatcher Hurd came in for five impressive innings and recorded 12 strikeouts. Expected No. 1 overall pick Dylan Crews, Hayden Travinski, Cade Beloso, Josh Pearson and Brayden Jobert all homered, and LSU won a thriller, 6-5, to take control of the Regional.
That allowed Monday to be the easy day. LSU had to beat Oregon State only one time, and it comfortably won the first game, 13-7, thanks to a team bullpen pitching effort and more offensive dominance.
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But in many ways, this weekend was the first chance to gain a real sense of Jay Johnson as LSU’s head coach. He’s still been somewhat new. He was the young, driven coach who took Arizona to two College World Series appearances but was still growing into the job at LSU. He failed to advance out of the Hattiesburg Regional last year, but nobody had expectations for that team. Then he added Skenes from Air Force and Tommy White from NC State, and LSU became the consensus preseason No. 1 team. It was the first real super team of this transfer portal era in college baseball.
That means more expectations. It means more eyeballs. Former LSU coach Skip Bertman, a Hall of Famer, still sits in on his press conferences. The other national title winning coach, Paul Mainieri, still lives 15 minutes from Alex Box Stadium. The pressure is perpetually on. And nobody can say Johnson doesn’t have the talent to win big.
And this weekend, the picture of what a great LSU future under Johnson looks like began to present itself.
Because in one weekend, he made that bold choice. He dealt with multiple delays. His revered pitching coach, Wes Johnson, accepted the head coaching job at Georgia days before the Regional. There were so many ways this could go wrong for Jay Johnson.
Yet the result was about everything happening in the background.
The staff that had just two non-Skenes pitchers with ERAs under 4.00? It contained Oregon State and pieced together two bullpen-led wins. Pitchers who struggled mightily for months are finding their form at the right time. Hurd, a transfer from UCLA, suddenly looks like a clear No. 3 starter. Griffin Herring pitched three clutch innings to seal the game Monday.
“Griffin Herring probably wasn’t ready to do what he did today in March,” Johnson said. “But he developed over the course of time. And because we had gotten him in some of those situations, he was totally in control of himself out there.”
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Travinski, a veteran catcher, was not in the lineup on a consistent basis, a four-year player who’d fallen out of favor. Johnson and his staff worked with Travinski for two years, and in late April he started to earn more time. Travinski has now homered 10 times in his last 20 games.
“The great part about this has been watching everything that was happening before we actually kind of put him in there,” Johnson said. “And you’re taking this talented guy that figured out a process to develop to get him to that point. And then he’s got nothing to lose. And those guys with talent that have nothing to lose that have the right plan, they can be scary. And he’s in that mode right now.”
And he has a team with fight.
Crews is his superstar, one of the best college hitters in recent memory — hitting .432 with 17 homers, 61 walks and a .736 slugging percentage. Crews is normally Mr. Cool, the casual Florida man with a calm demeanor always focused on the next task.
But on Sunday he showed some rare emotion. With LSU trailing Oregon State 3-0 in the fourth inning, Crews homered to left center. And he erupted. He punched the air and thumped his chest and shouted to the crowd. He practically tackled a teammate as he crossed home plate. Crews was waking this team up. And this wasn’t some star just biding his time until he goes No. 1 overall in the upcoming MLB Draft. He wants a title.
“The bats were a little quiet,” Crews said. “We were able to go in and reset our minds. I think it was just a turning point to get the team going and the crowd going. So it felt good.”
Then LSU homered eight more times in the next 12 innings to win the Regional. This team that operated as the clear No. 1 all season before losing two series in May suddenly had its mojo back.
Anything shy of a trip to Omaha will be a disappointment for this LSU baseball team. That’s just the reality of the roster Johnson recruited. But now, it’s time to figure out who the man actually is coaching that talented roster. And we’re seeing a coach who sees the big picture. Who thinks about peaking in June and understands why a calculated risk isn’t a risk at all.
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Johnson was asked Monday night if last season’s heartbreaking walk-off loss to Southern Miss that ended his first season added any extra motivation.
“I don’t need any more motivation,” he said. “This is my entire life.”
(Top photo: Michael Wade / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
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