Tiger baseball hit hard by MLB signing deadline rule as 11 recruits taken

LSU baseball coach Paul Mainieri is a self-proclaimed go-getter.

When he took over the Tigers’ program in 2006, the coach said his first and only goal was to win a national championship at LSU.

Mission accomplished; LSU won the 2009 College World Series – their sixth national championship since 1991.

But as the Tigers prepare for a new season, the always-busy Mainieri has experienced a bit of a role reversal this summer. Where the coach would have liked to be developing his young players, he instead had to sit in his office watching the clock and waiting for the MLB Draft signing deadline to pass – a date that basically set LSU’s roster – for better or for worse.

“Anything goes in the last week before the deadline,” Mainieri said. “Some of the clubs don’t even contact the kids until that time, much less discussing signing bonuses and things like that. You’re just caught between a rock and a hard place in knowing that you can get killed and lose more than a half-dozen kids, or you can hold onto all of them. It’s a helpless feeling as a coach.”

In total, 11 of LSU’s high school signees were taken in the MLB Draft in early June.

Of that total, just two prospects (Cam Bedrosian and Delino DeShields Jr.) had signed with their team prior to the final week before the Aug. 15 deadline.

So with the other nine guys still negotiating with professional teams before the deadline, Mainieri and the Tigers were preparing to have them on the roster in the new season.

But things didn’t go as the Tigers had planned on deadline day, and LSU lost first round pick Zach Lee, fourth round pick Garin Cecchini and 11th round pick Lucas LeBlanc to the professional level.

Those departures left LSU scrambling for new talent just days before school started – a rule Mainieri said hurts college baseball and should be changed.

“I’ve been saying for the past several years how ridiculous this system is,” Mainieri said. “It doesn’t take into account the way that it hurts college baseball at all … It’s just not fair to our game in any way.”

Help might soon be on the way, as the coach said he’s heard whispers that the entire MLB Draft might be overhauled. With that overhaul could come a new, July 15 deadline for players to sign with their professional teams.

But until that happens, the coach isn’t getting his hopes up.

“You know, that would only make sense,” he said. “But when things make sense, you always hold your breath, because it seems like sometimes the people making these decisions don’t want to make sense.”

Of the prospects who did enroll at LSU, four are pitchers.

Pitching is something the Tigers will seek to improve after having a 5.56 team ERA a year ago – a number that ranked No. 8 in the Southeastern Conference.

But like with everything else this summer, the Tigers were held up until recently, because they didn’t yet know what roles they should groom for their pitchers, because they haven’t known who would be on the roster.

“We had to figure out who we’ve got before we can do any of that,” he said. “We had to think to ourselves, ‘OK, do we have [first-round pick] Anthony Ranaudo back? Do we have [sixth-round pick] Kevin Gausman and [first-round pick] Zach Lee in school? Those are all things we had to figure out before we can do anything on the field. We had to figure out first of all, do we have the guys in the clubhouse and in school? So you can see how it could potentially hold back a team having to wait like this for the system to play itself out.”

Regardless of the players who signed, the Tigers’ pitchers might be thin because of injuries the team sustained over the summer.

Pitchers Joey Bourgeois and Chris Matulis will both likely miss all of 2011 after undergoing Tommy John surgery on their pitching elbows.

But Mainieri promised improvement and said last year’s struggles aren’t acceptable for the LSU program.

“Getting our pitching back on track and at a higher level is a big point of emphasis for us,” he said. “We’re going to have an awful lot of new guys on our pitching staff with all the injuries we’ve had this summer, we’ve only got a handful of veteran pitchers returning, so we’ve got a lot of work to do this fall.”

LSU pitcher Daniel Bradshaw readies for a pitch during a game last season. Bradshaw is one of the most prominent returnees on a pitching staff that needs improvement in 2011, according to Tigers’ baseball coach Paul Mainieri. STEVE FRANZ