Johnson looks to return LSU Baseball to glory days

It’s said that in coaching, you never want to be the guy that follows a legend.
Paul Mainieri certainly comes with a legendary resume.
In a career that crossed five decades, he won over 1,500 games.
That’s a coaching career that has seen more musical styles come and go than many of us even pay attention to.
Mainieri was around for Flock of Seagulls -- he may have even had the haircut -- and he was at Air Force in time for grunge to come and go.
He arrived at Notre Dame in time for the East Coast/West Coast Wars of rap in the mid-90s. He moved to LSU in 2007, a post-Wayne Toups era in zydeco that gave way to Travis Matte. He stayed at LSU long enough to see MTV lose its relevance in the music landscape in favor iTunes. Or is it Spotify? Or is it TikTok?
Wrapping it up, Mainieri was around long enough to see change. And lots of it.
So, it makes sense that at some point in a rapidly changing world, maybe baseball changed around him as well.
Mainieri loved a good hit-and-run and situational pitching as much as anyone. However, anyone watching the game knows that it’s played in a much different way now.
Skip’s Tigers of the mid-90s, that’s the Notre Dame/Rap Era in Mainieri Time, would’ve felt right at home in today’s game.
What’s that phrase they coined? That’s right, Gorilla Ball.
Maybe, try as hard as he did, it just wasn’t a thing Mainieri could wrap his head around.
Paul was a baseball purist, and there are some who argue that today’s game is the antithesis of the game they know and love.
However, Jay Johnson, the recently hired gun selected to succeed Mainieri, knows a thing or two about today’s game.
While at Arizona, his teams thrived on pummeling the baseball into submission. The 2021 version of Arizona had every batter over the .300 mark.
They hit homers too. Lots of them. That’s a hallmark of the Analytics Era we’re in today. It’s more efficient to hit a ball out of the park than it is to manufacture one inside of it.
In a game built on launch angles and exit velocities, Johnson’s hit first, ask questions later approach should be right at home in The Program That Skip Built.
He’s already making his mark on the program. The transfers he’s brought in, Arizona’s Jacob Berry and Samford’s Tyler McManus, bring extra pop to a lineup that definitely needed more of it last year.
Yes, they hit the ball. They hit it hard, too. What remains to be seen is if Johnson will be a hit in Baton Rouge or not.
Whatever the case may be, the Jay Johnson hire is one that was needed to bring LSU into the present of today’s game.
Mainieri is a baseball legend, and his national championship season will forever be appreciated in Tiger lore.
However, for this program to move forward, it may have to look to its past in one way.
Gorilla Ball is more relevant now than it ever was before.
If LSU hopes to rejoin the blue bloods of the sport, it may need to recapture that magic.