Tag: Paul Skenes

LSU baseball receives another No. 1 preseason ranking

The Tigers could be in for a special season on the diamond.

Baseball season is getting closer by the day, and coach [autotag]Jay Johnson[/autotag] and the Tigers have received another No. 1 preseason ranking — this time, by Perfect Game.

LSU tops its preseason top 25 and an SEC-heavy top 10. The Tigers are joined by Tennessee, Arkansas, Ole Miss, Florida and Texas A&M in the top 10. The Tigers have landed two-straight No. 1 recruiting classes and have pulled in some of the top transfer players from the portal.

Expectations are at an all-time high for this season at The Box. [autotag]Dylan Crews[/autotag] and [autotag]Tre Morgan[/autotag] will be joined by ACC Freshman of the Year [autotag]Tommy White[/autotag] and Air Force transfer [autotag]Paul Skenes[/autotag].

All four of them could be early-round draft picks in the next MLB Draft, but for now, they are focused on taking the Tigers to Omaha and bringing another championship to Baton Rouge.

The season starts on Friday, Feb.. 17th against Western Michigan at Alex Box Stadium.

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LSU tops the preseason Collegiate Baseball National Ranking

The Tigers are poised to have a championship-contending team.

It is not much of a surprise, but LSU is ranked as the No. 1 team in the country entering the 2023 season, according to Collegiate Baseball.

[autotag]Jay Johnson[/autotag] is coming off back-to-back No. 1 recruiting classes and the Tigers have possibly the No. 1 pick in the MLB draft, [autotag]Dylan Crews[/autotag], roaming around in the outfield.

The team would be stacked with those guys, but I haven’t even mentioned the transfers. LSU picked up two of the top transfers in the country when the Tigers grabbed one of the best power hitters in the country, [autotag]Tommy White[/autotag], and one of the best two-way players in the country, [autotag]Paul Skenes[/autotag].

LSU is one of six SEC teams in the top ten of the rankings. They are joined by Florida (2), Texas A&M (4), Tennessee (5), Arkansas (7), and Vanderbilt (9). That goes to show just how strong the SEC is in baseball. It is going to be a great season to be at Alex Box Stadium.

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LSU’s Dylan Crews and Paul Skenes go top 5 in this MLB mock draft

A couple of LSU Tigers could be quick to come off the board in the 2023 MLB draft

LSU baseball has no shortage of stars entering 2023, and a few could be moving quickly through the minors a year from now.

The two names drawing the most attention from MLB teams are [autotag]Dylan Crews[/autotag] and [autotag]Paul Skenes[/autotag]. In the last mock draft from MLB.com, both Crews and Skenes were selected in the top five.

The mock has Crews going first overall to the Pirates, while Skenes goes fourth overall to Texas.

Crews is projected to be the top player in the sport next year. The outfielder has been piling up stats for two years now and can hit for both power and contact. Skenes, who comes to LSU after beginning his career at Air Force, is expected to be one of the best pitchers in the conference.

The lengthy right-hander has all the tools to be an ace and can contribute at the plate, too.

In Crews and Skenes, LSU has two experienced stars to lead the lineup and rotation, respectively.

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Four LSU players named pre-season All-Americans

Four LSU baseball players were named preseason All-Americans

LSU baseball has high expectations entering the spring.

A team that showed promise in Jay Johnson’s first year brings back plenty of talent along with some hefty additions in the portal and some blue-chip freshmen.

Four of those players have been selected to Collegiate Baseball’s all-American team. [autotag]Dylan Crews[/autotag], in particular, has generated a lot of buzz. He’s as close as you can get to a consensus best player in the sport.

LSU hasn’t made a College World Series since 2017 when the Tigers dropped the final to Florida. In the four seasons since, talented LSU teams have fell short, but it never really felt like LSU had all the tools to make a run.

2023 is different. A championship will be the expectation. This is the best roster LSU has had in some time, headlined by these four stars.

Fall baseball is back on the Bayou

The Tigers continue with their fall scrimmages this weekend.

Week 2 of intrasquad scrimmages started Thursday night at Alex Box Stadium.

We learned a couple of important things during the games last week. We learned that [autotag]Tommy White[/autotag] is who we thought he was and that [autotag]Paul Skenes[/autotag] is an anomaly.

White was one of the biggest pickups from LSU’s 2022 transfer portal class. He was a star at North Carolina State, breaking the school record for most homers by a freshman in one season in 2022. White hit a home run during one of the games last week that had an exit velocity of 109.3 mph, and it traveled 392 feet. Good luck pitching against him.

Skenes may be LSU’s version of Shohei Ohtani. He was another high-profile transfer who spent two years at the Air Force Academy where he had a batting average of .367 in two years and an ERA of 2.73. Those are unreal numbers.

Since showing up at LSU, everyone on the team and coaching staff has raved about how talented Skenes is.

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LSU has the No. 1 transfer class in the nation, per Baseball America

The Tigers have been very active in improving the roster since the end of the 2022 season.

It has been an interesting offseason for [autotag]Jay Johnson[/autotag] and the LSU baseball team.

The Tigers have had players join the team by way of transferring and by graduating high school, but a few of the guys that were committed to playing for LSU were then picked up in the 2022 MLB draft.

Baseball America recently made a list of who they thought had the best 25 transfer classes in all of college baseball, and LSU came in at No. 1. The class features right-handed pitcher [autotag]Christian Little[/autotag] of Vanderbilt; third baseman [autotag]Tommy White[/autotag] of North Carolina State; right-handed pitcher [autotag]Thatcher Hurd[/autotag] of UCLA; right-handed pitcher/utility player [autotag]Paul Skenes[/autotag] of Air Force; and infielder [autotag]Ben Nippolt[/autotag] of Virginia Commonwealth.

Here is the breakdown from Baseball America.

With a .362 average and 27 home runs as a freshman a season ago, Tommy White showed that he’s already one of the best hitters in college baseball, period, and more than good enough to set aside question marks about his defensive viability.

Paul Skenes is an accomplished power hitter in his own right, with a .367/.453/.669 career slash line at Air Force with 24 home runs, and there is optimism about his ability to handle the defensive rigors of catching in the SEC. It will be interesting to see how that is balanced with his time on the mound, where he features a mid-90s fastball that touches the high 90s, a swing-and-miss mid-80s slider and a high-80s changeup that flashes plus.

Infielder Ben Nippolt, a late addition to the class from VCU, had a .430 on-base percentage and walked more than he struck out last season, but perhaps more valuable to the Tigers is his ability to play just about anywhere on the infield.

Right-hander Thatcher Hurd had a 1.06 ERA in 34 innings last season and looked like one of the best freshman arms in the country right up until a back injury ended his season prematurely. If he’s fully healthy and ready to go, his fastball that touched 96 mph last season and a low-80s slider that had a 56% whiff rate should get plenty of outs once again.

Right-hander Christian Little had moments of excellence at Vanderbilt, but now pitching coach Wes Johnson will look to bring that out of him more consistently. His stuff certainly stacks up, including a fastball that averaged over 94 mph and touched 98 last season.

We are a long way away from baseball season in the spring, but there are plenty of reasons to be excited about baseball at The Box this year.

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LSU baseball grabs a talented two-way player from the transfer portal

LSU landed the best two-way player in college baseball in Paul Skenes from Air Force.

Paul Skenes, a catcher/right-handed pitcher from the United States Air Force Academy, announced on Thursday that he will be taking his talents to the Bayou next spring to play for coach [autotag]Jay Johnson[/autotag] and the LSU Tigers.

The MLB draft is over, so Johnson doesn’t have to worry about losing this guy. As a sophomore last season, Skenes was named a Collegiate Baseball News Preseason First Team All-American, DIBaseball.com Preseason First Team All-American, Baseball America Preseason Third Team All-American, and he was named to Golden Spikes Award Preseason Watchlist.

Skenes lived up to that hype in 2022, finishing as a First Team All-American and earning the John Olerud Award as the best two-way player in college baseball. He pitched a total of 85.2 innings last season and finished the year with a 10-3 record, 96 strikeouts, 30 walks and a 2.73 ERA.

He appeared as a hitter in 51 games and finished with an average of .314 with 38 RBI, 10 doubles and 13 homers. He was the Shohei Ohtani of the United States Air Force. He was their F-22 fighter. He was Maverick from ‘Top Gun.’ I can’t wait to see how Johnson uses him next year.

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