re: What happened with LSU pitching in the postseason?

A couple factors...


SEC umps called extremely tight, basically a shoebox for a strike zone. That, combined with smaller (and lively) ballparks, wreaked havoc with a lot of pitchers. Good batters knew the zone, and sat waiting for a meatball. If you try to nibble at the edges, you start walking and get into trouble. If you give in, you're basically throwing BP. And in those parks, solid contact on a fly ball is 50/50 gonna be a HR.

Omaha, the park is big and can be deadball. The zone has been been looser, I've seen a lot of called strikes that I thought the batter couldn't have done a damn thing with. Not saying those are bad calls, but simply balances things toward the pitchers. Batter has to reach out and foul them off. Then, when things did get barreled up, that park took the steam out of a lot of fly balls. I didn't watch the Fla HRs, but the ones I saw in LSU games (including Tennessee's off Guidry), they were blasted. You had to man up to hit them.