Jay Johnson reveals LSU's plan for two-way player Gavin Guidry in 2024

There are certain moments that can do wonders for your confidence, potentially even change your career. For two-way player Gavin Guidry, one came at the very end of LSU‘s 2023 season: the chance to clinch a national title for the Tigers.

Guidry was the last man standing on the mound for LSU when the championship series against Florida came to a close.

He struck out Florida’s Colby Halter for the final out, cementing LSU as national champs. Now Guidry will seek to be an even more important part of the Tigers’ bid to repeat.

“He is going to mainly focus on pitching,” coach Jay Johnson said of the two-way star. “With that being said, he’s such a good athlete that when you trickle down the roster for SEC play, I have no problem putting him in to play defense, run, step up with the bat, execute something. But we’re going to put the focus on pitching.”

Guidry will have some immediate advantages in 2024 that he didn’t have last year. Now he’ll be more fully focused on pitching, whereas last year the focus was more split between playing in the infield and pitching.

Not anymore.

“We didn’t throw him into pitching, we built him up to pitch last year, but he didn’t pitch in the fall last year,” Johnson said. “And the load he took on throughout the season, we did not have him pitch in the fall. We went back to the position player thing and so kind of slowly built him up again.

“But I’m really excited for him to be able to dive in on this and this alone and see where we can get his ceiling. As a competitor, he’s going in the game. That’s just how I feel. When he’s on the mound I feel like you’re going to win. And there’s a lot of guys on this staff that I feel that way about.”

Last year Guidry made 23 appearances on the mound and posted a 3-0 record, notching a 3.77 ERA, 42 strikeouts and three saves.

He’ll have a chance to do a whole lot more this season, particularly as he focuses his attention fully on pitching, rather than being a two-way player.

“I think there’s some untapped potential by focusing on that,” Johnson said. “But we’re not abandoning the potential to contribute on the two-way thing. We’re just going to put more focus on the pitching, for his benefit.”