LSU’s pitching coach resigns

LSU baseball coach Paul Mainieri promised changes in Baton Rouge following a disappointing season.

One of those changes came to light this week, even though it wasn’t the coach doing the decision making.

Mainieri announced that the team’s associate head coach and pitching coach David Grewe had resigned from his post and will “pursue other career opportunities.”

Grewe had served as the team’s pitching coach for the past three seasons, joining the staff after serving as Michigan State’s head coach from 2006-08.

“David has decided to take his career in a new direction, and we wish him the best in all of his future endeavors,” Mainieri said. “We’re very grateful to David for the contributions he made to our program, including being a part of a national championship, a conference championship and two league tournament titles.”

Grewe’s career in Baton Rouge started as good as possible, as the Tigers won the College World Series in his first year with the team.

LSU struggled on the mound in each of the next two seasons under Grewe, posting a 5.56 team ERA in 2010. That number improved to a 4.13 ERA in 2011, but that improvement could be attributed to new bats in college baseball, which have dropped scoring numbers across the country. LSU was No. 6 in the Southeastern Conference in ERA in 2011.

Aside from the mound, Grewe’s biggest contribution to the team has been on the recruiting trail.

LSU has fielded some of the best recruiting classes in the country throughout the coach’s tenure.

While a lot of those players signed with the MLB and never touched LSU’s campus, many others did and made instant impacts, including 2011 freshmen Kevin Gausman, Kurt McCune and JaCoby Jones.

“I know that my contributions off the field, specifically, bringing in the No. 1-ranked recruiting class in 2010 and securing commitments for the LSU program for the 2011 and 2012 recruiting classes will enable future success that will last LSU baseball for the next four years,” Grewe said.

While Grewe looks to advance himself in college baseball, Mainieri said his focus is to find his replacement, a process he has already started.

“I have immediately started the process to identify the best pitching coach in the country and bring him to LSU,” Mainieri said. “We will have a coach who can best develop the outstanding pitchers that are returning to the team along with a very talented group of recruits that will join the program in August.”

New blood in Baton Rouge just might be exactly what the team needs, as LSU missed the NCAA Tournament for the second time in Mainieri’s career this season.

The setback took the team by surprise, as Mainieri said he believed the math proved his team deserved a spot in the NCAA Tournament.

The NCAA Tournament Selection Committee must have had a different formula than the coach, because the Tigers were left out of the Field of 64.

“By my calculation, and I’m certainly biased about it, but I thought we were in,” Mainieri said. “I felt like we deserved to be.”

“Shocked,” junior outfielder Mikie Mahtook added. “We for sure thought we were going to get in. We felt we deserved to get in.”

While other teams played their respective conference tournaments, LSU’s players hunkered down in Baton Rouge last week and refined their skills to remain sharp for a potential spot in an NCAA Regional.

While players worked in the batting cages or in the bullpen, Mainieri said he sat in his office and compared his team’s body of work compared to that of other bubble teams around the country.

When the weekend was finished and all of the records were laid onto the table, he said he was almost certain his team had punched its ticket to the tournament.

But the committee opted to choose bubble teams like Mississippi State, Troy, Dallas Baptist and St. John’s over the Tigers, despite LSU having better RPI and strength of schedule measures than most of those teams.

“When I saw some of the schools going up there in the early part of the selection show, quite frankly, I didn’t even think that they were in the competition with us for the bid,” Mainieri said. “So obviously I was very surprised about some of the selections.”

With the tournament now underway and LSU stuck at home, the Tigers’ attention is shifting toward improvement.

One of the reasons the committee may have shied away from LSU this year is consistency, or the lack thereof that the Tigers’ possessed in 2011.

LSU stormed out of the gates in 2011 as an NCAA Tournament-caliber team, winning 16 of their first 17 games to start the season.

But that peak quickly turned into a valley, as the Tigers opened Southeastern Conference play with just a 3-9 record, which dug a hole too deep for the team to crawl out of.

With the new pitching coach, a roster filled with returnees and a bad taste in their mouths, Mainieri said that’s the biggest focus of 2012 – to not leave their fate in the hands of any committees in their new season.

“Any time you put it in the hands of people to make these decisions, you run the risk of getting the short end of the decision,” Mainieri said. “This is why we need to get better. We can’t put ourselves in this position again, but no matter what you do, unless you win the league in the regular season and/or the tournament you don’t know what the result is going to be.”