It's the Locked On Podcast Network, your team every day. Saving Seekers, we hear you. Seeking energy savings, always keep your energy prices under the price cap. With Next Pledge, your energy prices are guaranteed to always stay below the price cap. Satisfy those savings cravings. Check out our full range of tailored energy solutions at eonnext.com forward slash save. Eonnext, we make energy savings work. Next Pledge is a 12-month fixed-term trucker tariff with variable rates lower than off-chance price cap for standard variable tariffs. Direct debit required. Tees and seas apply. What's up everybody? This is Ross Jackson, one of the hosts of the Locked On Podcast Network. And if you haven't heard yet, we started a club and we would love for you to join. It's called the Everydayer Club. And one of the things that you get as a member is an ad-free version of the podcast that you're listening to right now. It works with whatever podcast app you already use. Same episodes every day, just no ads. There's also a member's only group chat for fans of your team, plus a lot more. You can check it out by tapping the Everydayer Club link in the show notes. LSU swept at Ole Miss. We've got the recap and what it means for the second app of conference play. Locked On LSU. Here we go. You are locked on LSU, your daily podcast on the LSU Tigers. Part of the Locked On Podcast Network, your team every day. Okay, let's get it. It is locked on LSU, your team every day. I'm your host Matt Moscona. LSU loses eight to seven game three at Ole Miss. They're swept out of Oxford. The Tigers now fall to six and nine in conference play as they hit the halfway point. So we will get to the second half and what it means now being three games under 500, which you had to find a way to scratch out one this weekend. You almost pulled off another improbable rally. It just wasn't enough. We'll go through this game and unfortunately for LSU, there's nothing really to talk about until the seventh when LSU found itself down seven nothing and had an incredible, certainly improbable rally. It led off with back to back to back homers from Currie L, Aaron Beatty and Brown. Of course, Brown homered off of Liberty who they brought in for Ray. Ray was outstanding. He held LSU hit list through the first six innings. He gave up a walk and hit batsman. That was it. It's the only runners at LSU who had on base the first six innings. But LSU got going then Sernah singled, Mylam singled, Brown chopped out the first base, but advanced the runners to second and third. Pearson strikeout felt really significant. And remember in that at bat is when Pearson hit the fly ball down the right field line, which popped out of the left of the right fielder's glove. It was going to get that run home from third. A sack fly would have made it seven to four, but ultimately it ended up serving LSU even better in that situation because after Pearson's pop out, he struck out, which was devastating. But then Simpson came up with the two RBI single that made it seven to six. Currie L would single and then of course the wild pitch allowed the tying run to come home. And you had an opportunity there to maybe take the lead after Aaron Beatty walked, but Jake Brown flew out to left center. One bad ball. He just barely missed. Brand new ball game and you needed to go throw up a zero. And unfortunately you just did what you've done all year, which is not be very good out of the bullpen. So Marcos pause went back out for the eighth and I'm assuming for the bottom of the seven. And I didn't love that decision. Now with the benefit of hindsight, it's easy to say that, but in that situation, you're nine outs away. They had Sheeran up. You know, Sheeran is the guy that's your best bullet available at this point really throughout the course of this season. One of the things that's been evidenced is the number of guys you can count on in the bullpen to throw strikes really it's Cowan, it's Gidry, it's Sheeran. At times it's been Santiago Garcia, which it was on this day, which I'll go back to and talk about in a second. If I had one big issue, it was letting pause go out and start the seven. And I get it. I know what Jay was thinking in that situation, like you're probably going to need Sheeran to finish this game. Whenever he takes the ball, he's not coming out. It's his game. So you want to not stress him, especially in a tie ball game and the event that you go to extra. So if you can get any more length out of pause in that situation, I get what he's thinking, but it felt like you were, you were playing with fire there. You were flirt with danger with a guy who's pause is a super up, a super high upside pitcher. Jay has set a point blank. Pause is going to be a guy that's a weekend rotation arm during his time at LSU. You can just see it. The big physical body, the strong right hander. I mean, he throws mid upper nineties. He's going to be awesome. It's just, it's command and it's arsenal. And it was in a tough spot. And he went out there and allowed the lead off runner to get on second base after the collision with Yam and the interference. So in that run, of course, Sheeran came in and that run would, would unfortunately come into score. So if I had one beef, well, I would say actually I have two beefs. It was in that situation, in that situation, the seventh, it was not starting the seventh with Sheeran and saying, I need you to go get me nine outs. Go give me nine outs and we'll figure it out after that. If it goes into extras, the other beef that I would say I had was the decision to start Grand Font. No, and not Gavin Gidry. I know why what Jay's thinking the last two weeks is what we just talked about. You, you don't have enough reliable arms in the bullpen. So think about last week, right? Where, um, Gidry was the listed game three starter and then you had him getting hot in game one and it ended up being Fontenot who started game three. So I get what Jay is thinking in that situation. Like if you're in game one or two with a lead and Gidry is your best arm, you're going to Gidry to win the game. So I get what he's thinking in that situation about why you list Fontenot as the game three starter in the event that you might use Gidry in the first two games. But just like last week, when you didn't use Gidry in games one or two, you started Fontenot and then ultimately went to Gidry. Similar in this situation, even though Gidry was the listed starter, I think in this situation, even Fontenot, the listed starter, you should have started Gidry. Again, benefit of hindsight, but Fontenot was one of those guys that has tremendous upside as a prospect. I mean, you saw him touch, you've seen him touch 99 this year. Regardless of he doesn't get another guy out at LSU, some team is going to draft him and give him a shot to play Pro Ball because the arm talent is that good. The results haven't been good enough. And so in this situation in this game, in such a significant game, I would have preferred to lean on a guy who has shown the ability more consistently to throw strikes and that has not been Fontenot. Fontenot recorded one out in the game. He gave up a single to Decker, a single or a ground out to Becetta. Then he walked Udermark and then went RBI single, RBI single. He was out of game and Gidry was in. Now Gidry in this ball game, I thought pitched okay in a situation where you had to get some length and he got your nine outs and he struck out three, but he allowed five earned runs. He gave up a couple of monster home runs, including the, I think it was Becetta, who was the one that hit the home run, probably still doesn't land yet, 430 feet, whatever it was to right center. But you needed someone that could give you a little bit of length. Gidry got you three innings, but really if there's a story in this game, again, we're going to talk about what's ahead here in just a second, the big picture stuff, because I'm sure that's what people are more interested in right now. But in this situation, I thought Santiago Garcia and Marcos pause there, throwing up the zeros like they did, they gave you a shot and they gave you a shot to get back in it. Garcia was awesome. He went in inning in two thirds, faced six hitters, struck out two. The only base runner that reach was walk. So I thought Garcia was really good. And then pause in the, in the six, getting you those three outs in the six, allowed you to go into the seventh and get that seven spot when it felt over and tie the ballgame. Unfortunately, he allowed what would be the game winning run to get on base there in the, in the bottom of the seventh before giving way to Sheeran. A couple of other things that I had. We did see some tweaks in the lineup in this game. And I'll be curious to see what it means going forward. I don't know how you take Braun out at first at this point. I think we can all agree that, but the big change is that you put Braden Simpson in that second base and he did strike out there in, in the top of the ninth. But he was one for three and the one was in, was an O two, two RBI single in the seventh with two outs. So that was a massive swing in that spot. And we've talked about all the guys at LSU brought in out of the portal in this, on this roster that just haven't panned out from York to Dardar to Simpson to caraway. And Simpson's in that number. Like he hasn't panned out like they thought he would or hoped he might. But I think what's evident is Dardar right now is again, he's continues to be a defensive liability and he just strikes out too much. The, the, the six for 10 weekend, a couple of weekends ago was fantastic to see. That's also the outlier for Dardar. He's hitting sub 200 in conference play and he's not even having competitive at bats and striking out too much. So I had no problem going with, with Simpson today. Um, you know, put you another right handed bat in the lineup, but, um, but I had no problem going to Simpson. It's going to be interesting to see what Jay, Alex, to do moving forward. I think it's pretty clear, like Bron, who came into this game with five hits on the weekend, uh, was over four with a strikeout in this game. Don't care. Uh, Bron has proven he is worthy of the opportunity to continue to play. Same as Serno, one, when the young guys got their opportunities. I think the interesting thing that it was going to be what's up with Stanfield. So Stanfield, we know Miss 16 games earlier in the year with the hand injury on Tuesday night against Bethune. When he ran into the wall, you saw it today. He had the, the wrap on his, on his, uh, on his hand, um, you know, the tape wrap on his hand, it's his left. So it's his glove hand. So it doesn't affect his ability to throw, but it does affect his ability to catch the ball in the hit, um, which is pretty obvious. And then he made it an awesome catch in this ball game going into the wall and that that wasn't, it was his back into the wall. It was a leaping catch, but, um, um, you sure hope Stanfield is, is okay because think about the, the RBI double by furnace, which scored the, would ended up being the game winning run. That was a ball that hit, that hit off the wall. I mean, it's a play that Stanfield probably makes that Bron did. I'm not trying to crush Braun. I think Braun's been great, but I think Bron, even if they might think of him as first base outfield, he's far more first baseman than outfield or just, especially when you look at the elite level defensive outfielders you have with Stanfield, Curry, Ellen Brown. So you really hope Chris Stanfield is okay as, as beat up as he's been this year, defensively, he's been outstanding. And for a team that is really bad defensively, and we can all agree they're bad defensively, this team's already committed more errors this season at the halfway point of conference play than they did all of last year. So for a team that's really bad defensively, when you have strong defensive players and there's no doubt, Stanfield, Curry, Ellen, Brown, Milam are your best defensive players. They got to be in the lineup every day. So hopefully, hopefully Chris Stanfield is, is okay. So Tigers say a pretty miserable day offensively except for the seventh. And it was interesting because when you looked at these, the pitching matchups throughout this entire weekend, how they set up was mirror images of each other. Even though Elliot is a veteran guy and Evans is a sophomore, statistically, they're so similar. They're good Friday night pitchers, but not dominant aces. Game two, you had two elite level prospects going against each other and Schmidt was great through three innings, but couldn't get you beyond that. And obviously their guy was awesome through six innings. And then here in game three, you had two guys that, that are bullpen guys that are hard throw and righties that, you know, are our big time prospects. It hasn't really materialized at the college level yet. And Raib was just much better than font. No font. No, didn't get out of the first and Raib through a no hitter through six. So the things that were the toss up, you know, the 50, 50 points of this weekend, they all seem to go old Mrs. Way. And that's why LSU is leaving Oxford, having been swept and sitting there at six and nine in conference play. So let me do this, knock out my quick break, come back. We'll talk some big picture stuff, which I know is probably far more interesting than talking about an eight to seven loss that LSU just had. So stay with us here. It's locked in LSU, your team every day. The NBA playoffs are here where every possession matters. Every matchup is magnified and every game can swing a series. And right now, FanDuel is giving new customers a great way to get in on the action. And here's what I like about it. You can bet just $5 and get 250 in bonus bets. If your first bet wins, the app makes it easy to follow the action with player stats, trends and matchups all in one place. And during the playoffs, that extra insight really matters when you're looking at stars, role players and key moments. It just makes the entire playoff experience more engaging from start to finish. 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Visit TurboTax.com slash local to find a store near you and book your appointment. Saving seekers, we hear you. Seeking energy savings, always keep your energy prices under the price cap. With Next Pledge, your energy prices are guaranteed to always stay below the price cap. Satisfy those savings cravings. Check out our full range of tailored energy solutions at eonnext.com forward slash save. Eonnext, we make energy savings work. Next Pledge is a 12-month fixed-time trucker tariff with variable rates lower than off-chance price cap for standard variable tariffs. Direct debit required. T's and C's apply. So the Tigers swept at Ole Miss. They fall to six and nine in conference play. If you're with us live on YouTube, please smash that like button. We appreciate you very much for spending part of your Sunday afternoon with us. When you look at conference play now, Georgia at 11 and four at the halfway point, we're waiting on the result of game three at this point of Texas, Texas A&M as they're both sitting at nine and five after the Aggies won the first two games of that series in college station, but they were in a weather delay. Florida at nine and six, Bama, Arkansas at eight and seven. A couple of teams are still waiting on the result of their weekend series, but the big result was Mississippi State being swept again at home. Back to back weekends, they've been swept at home, which is really improbable to think with state now at seven and eight in conference play after Arkansas sweeps at duty noble field to go up to eight and seven. And then you got the bottom of the league, Oklahoma, Mississippi State seven and eight, Oklahoma seven and eight, Tennessee seven and eight, Vandy seven and eight, LSU now at six and nine in conference play. So LSU only ahead of South Carolina and Missouri, South Carolina five and 10, Missouri at three and 12. So of course the bottom two don't make the SEC tournament. It's pretty clear LSU is going to make the SEC tournament because Missouri and South Carolina are just miserable baseball teams. There will be enough wins for LSU, even if it is the 14th team in the last team, they'll be in the SEC baseball tournament to make postseason, but obviously there's far grander expectations here. So at six and nine in league play, you look and say, okay, well, what's next next weekend? You're obviously welcoming in Texas A&M, a Texas A&M team that's got a series win and potentially a series sweep against Texas. I look at that A&M has been a hot and cold team this year. The hope is at home desperate spot for LSU and A&M team may be coming on an emotional letdown after this giant weekend at home against Texas, having to go on the road. And then LSU goes on the road to Mississippi State. Now look, Mississippi State has three players, every pitcher in their rotation. I'm not sure if you saw this, but baseball America earlier this week put out a tweet that all three pitchers in Mississippi State's rotation this year are all projected as first round picks in 2027. So that's going to be a real challenge. However, state, which, you know, three weeks ago looked like maybe the best team in the conference has now been swept at home and back to back weeks. All of a sudden that weekend, I'm not saying anything looks easy for LSU, but it looks far less daunting than it did. But that's still a road series at Mississippi State, a road series at Georgia, still ahead for LSU. You do have home series remaining against Mississippi State. And then obviously you'll have South Carolina and Florida to wrap up the regular season in Baton Rouge. When you think about making regional play, that target number really is 13. If you get to 13 wins, you should be in regional play. So at LSU right now, it's six and nine at the halfway point. They're going to have to be at least one game better than that in the second half. If you want to think about just the base level, get into the NCAA tournament, get to 13 wins. If you could find a way to get to 14, that would certainly do it. But 13 kind of is that magical number to get into the NCAA tournament. Now we can have the conversation about LSU's RPI. We'll see where that lands after this weekend when all the numbers are crunched. But the bottom line is just going on the road and playing three games against the top 15 RPI team at Ole Miss is going to help your RPI, which was 73 coming into this weekend. You're still going to have huge RPI opportunities going on the road against Georgia, playing Texas A&M going on the road against Mississippi State. These are all going to be top 20 RPI road series. So your RPI is going to take care of itself as it always does. But the resume is what you've got to worry about at this point. And it's going to be, you've got to find some good wins next weekend with A&M coming into the box. Certainly is a big opportunity for LSU where the Tigers are going to have to find a way to win two games. You know, I can scratch out a way to say, okay, where are there seven wins? Maybe you could look at two wins at home against South Carolina. Can you win two games at home against Florida? Well, that's four. And then you have three other weekends with Mississippi State, Georgia and Texas A&M. One each and those is seven wins that gets you to 13. So that feels doable. But if you want to put yourself in a more advantageous situation, it's find a way to win a home series against Texas A&M. Listen, I understand that at this point, you're probably rolling your eyes and I don't blame you. And I'm not sitting here banging the drum for this team saying that there's going to be anything great. I've said it for several weeks now that their season is going to end in disappointment whenever that is. If it's before regional play, if, you know, in the SEC tournament, if it's in regional play on the road, if they win a regional go to supers, go to Omaha, it'll know. And I'll remind you, last year, Florida started conference play one and 11. They made the NCAA tournament. You know, LSU was three and 12 at the halfway point in 2024. Right now they're six and nine. So just for context, you made the tournament two years ago, starting three and 12 in league play at the halfway point, you're three games better than that right now. Again, I'm not trying to sunshine pump. I mean, we'll understand the reality of this team. You don't have a deep, reliable bullpen. You're a very poor defensive team and you don't have a frontline ace. The thing about 2024 is you had Holman and jump and you had two guys at the front of your rotation that were really good. Evans and Schmidt could certainly come on and give you that. But to predict that at this point, I think would be a little silly. You hope it happens, but I can't, I can't in good faith tell you, I think that's going to happen. What will likely happen, however, is you get Cooper Moore back. So if you get Cooper Moore back, if nothing else, when you're looking at a team with a lack of viable options that can get you out in the bullpen, if you add more back to the rotation and this guy can maybe go get you 12, 15, 18 outs in a weekend, well, that changes the math for J Johnson and Nate Yeske. Now you're not so reliant on, first of all, it allows you to move Schmidt back to Sunday, which gives you a big time bulletin game three. And then you're not so reliant on Gidry and Sheeran and Cowan as three guys that you've got to get to extend you big innings in a weekend. So getting Cooper Moore back, Jay said earlier this week, they think more will be able to pitch in some capacity against Texas A&M. We'll see how that looks. Maybe he starts game three and gets you three outs, six outs. I don't know what it'll be, but getting Cooper Moore back certainly be a benefit. But the math, the math works, right? Where I guess I just explained the math works where you can get to 13 or 14 wins in conference where it's realistic and you can make the NCAA tournament. You'll certainly be on the road somewhere as a low seed and a team that that's not going to be projected to do much, but get in the tournament and see what happens. It's a giant opportunity. They're all huge at this point now. Three games under 500 at the halfway point, but you just reassess right at the beginning of the season. We were looking at, okay, what's it going to take to be a national seed? You had a pretty quickly after you lost your first two SEC weekends and you were, you know, you lost a home series to Sac State and stuff like that. You had to reassess. And then it was, all right, what would it take to be a regional host? And we went through that like Tennessee a year ago as a great barometer. They were 16 and 14 in the conference and they were a regional host. Well now 16 wins in league play doesn't feel like that's, that's in the cards or even remote possibility for this LSU team. So how do you get into the tournament? Well, 13 is your baseline. How do you get two or beyond 13 league wins? If you do that, you should be playing, playing June baseball. And I think that's got to be the target for this team now. How do you find a way to get seven more SEC wins to get you to 13 and get your spot in regional play? We'll be following it here as disappointing as this weekend was with the Tigers losing two Ole Miss. Okay, y'all, that'll do it for us. Please if you're with us live on YouTube, thank you so much for spending part of your Sunday with us, disappointing as it may be. Please smash that like button, subscribe to the channel, hit the bell so you're notified whenever we post a new video or go live. If you're listening or watching on demand, we thank you so much for that as well. Please subscribe on your favorite podcast at Radis Leave a review and let a friend know that if they love the Tigers, we got you every single day for lockdown LSU. It's your team every day. Next Pledge is a 12-month fixed-time track-a-tariff with variable rates lower than off-chance price cap for standard variable tariffs. Direct debit required. Teas and seas apply.
