In college baseball, there’s pretty much never a team that knows what it has to start the season. Not 1-9. Not the entire pitching staff. Odd that we are supposedly a program that is based on CWS or bust yet lose our shit on a midweek loss. Those games are available to find out what you have for that post season run.
Cowan had pitched 3 innings Friday night. Let’s keep in mind he’s a Wofford transfer that throws about 90. You are correct they could have gone Evans and maybe that works out, buts it unlikely he finishes that game.
In the end, LSU looks to have trusted about 4 pitchers. Highlighted that Cowan only started twice - both post season. Then Eysnson came in to finish Little Rock. Had they lost their Spencer, they’re likely worse off than us in spite of having all that talent on their team. They didn’t trust those fast ballers to throw strikes.
The difference in LSUs final outcome as compared to ours is they got a weak regional. They didn’t lose Anderson or Jones. Then they stayed out of the losers bracket so their lack of trust in that staff didn’t impact the outcomes.
Here are some numbers to chew on for Horns versus UTSA. Bing and Howard combined for 7 innings of no hit ball on the early season against them. Ruger gave up 1 run in 4 innings. I believe the discussion then was it very much mattered to UTSA.
Now Burns. He gave up 4 hits and 1 earned run on that Tuesday night. He allowed all 3 inherited runs to score.
So let’s advance the season a couple of months. You’re up 6-5. One out, 2 runners on. Who you going to out of the pen? Burns it is. He proceeds to give up 3 hits, 1 run of his own and allows both inherited runs to score. The only out recorded was a throw out at home.
Teams don’t know what they have in the early season. The situation you highlighted is a bit of contrast with our end to the season. We had some data points for several guys but chose to ignore them. I haven’t heard the rationale for our regional pitching choices, but the choices were odd. And several were not good with signs indicating that potential outcome.