Jay Johnson talks series loss to Mississippi State, moving forward

Jay Johnson met with the media on Monday afternoon to discuss his team’s series loss to Mississippi State to start SEC play over the weekend, then got into his pitching, fielding, and everything he saw and what it takes to move forward. Here’s what he said.

Overall thoughts

“Just looking at it phase by phase. Winning and losing starts and ends on the mound. I don’t think we pitched well. A lot of things are correctable and we’ve already started on that. Defensively we did not play our best. We have a good defensive team, but we didn;t play great on defense. Offensively, there were a few bright spots and what I told the team last night is, scoring 18 runs in a weekend is not enough to sweep in this league. It is enough to win two out of three if the other elements are in order. That gives us a baseline. Baserunning, nothing was glaring as a bad play. As a team standpoint, relative to attitude, effort, competitiveness, being in that environment will help our team advance.”

On the defensive struggles…

“Give credit to the opponent for putting pressure on us by putting the ball in play and putting it in play with runners in scoring position. We had a few mistakes in the outfield, which you don’t usually see. Tommy was exceptional at third base. Michael was solid, we didn’t get that double play on Friday and if we got that then I believe that game plays out differently. I’m not as concerned about the defense to be honest. I’m going to give Mississippi State credit for putting pressure on us and putting the ball in play. It’s all very fixable.”

Pitching assessment…

“Nate for ten pitches was great. He clearly needs to throw more than ten pitches in a weekend. Griffin competed well in the game on Saturday. The guys that pitched in those environments before were a little more settled and it helped them in that regard. It’s a good learning experience for those other guys. There’s a lot to that dynamic that will shake out and we’ll get figured out. It’s hard to argue the results in the non conference. I have good optimism we’ll pitch better this weekend.”

Wake up call?

“No, that’s not right. They weren’t going in there, not ready to win and not prepared to win. We got beat by a team that played really good two out of three and one message from one right now is ‘when it’s going well, it’s never as good as it seems and when it’s bad it’s never as bad as it seems. It’s how you look at it.’ And right now we need to look at it from a perspective of improvement in every aspect of how we play. That’s all we can do. It’s not getting any easier, so that’s not a surprise to anybody. It’s a really tough SEC schedule, including the team we just played. That’s a really good first five of the order. They throw strikes. They have a great atmosphere and had a very good home field advantage this weekend.”

On the week ahead…

“For me, this time of year, the tone doesn’t change for me unless it needs to. The midweek has like 16 wins already, so that will be a good challenge. Watched a bunch last night as we waited for our flight. On the weekend, it’s a team we played for a national championship last year with draft prospects all over the field. We haven’t played them at home since I’ve been here. I’d be concerned if our players weren’t excited for this week, but they are. They’re excited to get back on the field. It’s good we get to play tomorrow.”

Tuesday pitching…

“Javen Coleman will start tomorrow and then we’ll go from there.”

On development…

“It’s win the game first. There are a number of things that go into that. We’ve used 17 or 18 pitchers and I don’t ever remember doing that before. There’s a fine line with who’s pitching often, matchups, and who’s fresh, but right now in a normal schedule, that will help that group. Just not having that game where you’re pushing that guy into a second or third appearance. We can work and practice and these guys need practice. We’re practicing at 1:30 before we play a 6:30 game. We haven’t had a ton of time for that and that’s something I’ll look at in the future. We need to get on the field with them.”

On the SEC…

“It’s something else right now. There’s a lot of talent and a lot of teams that present things that are tough to deal with. That’s why you have to focus on yourself and I did that this weekend. I saw Florida won two out of three because we play them next weekend.”

On his pitcher’s response to struggles…

“I talked to Luke on Saturday and he’s such a professional about how he goes about his business, he said he’ll be better this week. He gave us a chance to win without his best stuff and we got caught in that middle part of the game where it’s tough to take him out. I probably would have got him out a batter or two earlier, but the guy had just thrown 24 scoreless innings. For my book, that;s who I want on the mound. He’s earned that right.

Gage is highly competitive as well. I didn’t talk to him yesterday, but I’ll talk to him today or tomorrow. He’s definitely talented and I’m sure he’s eager to get back out there and compete this weekend.”

On pitching development…

“They want to do better. I have good faith that it will be better. I’ve had weekends like that in the past where it felt like that was inevitable, because of a talent disparity, but I have more optimism these guys will be able to respond. And there are a few guys we need to push up the chart and it;s our job to get the best out of them. The pitching roster for the weekend is very fluid right now and that’s not a bad thing. That’s a good thing. Some guys are working today to potentially work tomorrow and if they don’t then they’ll pitch on Wednesday in a simulated game. It’s about pulling the best out of each guy in how we train them and we prepare them to maximize their talent. We’re deep diving a lot of that right now.”

On Mississippi State attacking early in counts…

“If that’s what they do it’s our job to respond to that in terms of pitch execution. For a few of our guys, I would think that would to our advantage and it didn’t this weekend. That’s something we need to look at and need to be better there because there are some teams that will attack that way.”

On the outfield…

“A lot of them are the same across the board. That’s a good thing. Josh played well this weekend with his experience. There are guys that provided good things over the weekend, hit we’re not set and until I feel convicted about that, we won’t. It would be undermining the opportunity to utilize our roster effectively. I would love it if two guys established themselves and said I’m playing, but I don’t feel that way. They can’t play for the next opportunity, they have to play for this opportunity, and that’s part of the growth process.”

Sunday decision to start Asthon Larson

“I thought he did a great job. Smoked the ball in his first at bat, took a walk, then doubled to left center field. He’s going to be a good field. When I mention not being settled it’s because Ethan had some good at bats before he got hurt, then Ashton took mature at bats in an SEC game. We’re going to keep developing all of them then play to win that game that day. Hopefully over time, you can settle into something.”

Louisiana Tech

“A lot of wins. they have a good coach. They’re confident. They have some old players. This is the last year for COVID-year players and they have a few of those guys. It’s going to be a good game.”