GLENN GUILBEAU, Tiger Rag Editor
(Fifth of the five-part series “First Pitch Fever” on the opening of LSU baseball season today.)
The NCAA Transfer Portal has been trending since 2021 when the world of college athletics changed forever. Name, Image & Likeness dawned that summer with legal payments going to “student-athletes” in the thousands and millions of dollars along with the portal changing at that time to allow players to transfer to another school immediately instead of having to sit out a year.
Immediately, as in often not thinking about a move enough.
Over 11,000 college football players entered the portal in 2023-24, hoping the gra$$ will be greener along with the impetus of more NIL money. Or sometimes players enter the portal because it’s trending, it’s cool, everyone else is doing it, or just because something didn’t work out at their first or second school. They didn’t play as much as they thought they would, or perhaps a coach looked at them wrong.
LSU junior right-handed pitcher Gavin Guidry wanted something different after two seasons at LSU as a key reliever, but he didn’t transfer. That’s why he will be in uniform today when the No. 2 Tigers open the 2025 season against Purdue-Fort Wayne at 2 p.m. in Alex Box Stadium.
LSU’s SATURDAY GAME MOVED TO 11 A.M.
The series will continue on Saturday at 11 a.m. in a game moved up from 1 p.m. because of expected heavy rains. The series finale will be on Sunday at 1 p.m.
PREVIOUS 4 TIGER RAG “FIRST PITCH FEVER” SERIES:
-MONDAY: KADE ANDERSON’S DREAMS COME TRUE
-TUESDAY: THE JAY JOHNSON PHILOSOPHY
-WEDNESDAY: JARED JONES USING END OF 2024 AS “FUEL”
-THURSDAY: LSU MAY HAVE “ANGELS IN THE OUTFIELD”
Guidry came to LSU in 2023 from Barbe High in Lake Charles as the state’s Gatorade High School Player of the Year after compiling an 8-0 record with an 0.16 ERA with 83 strikeouts in 45 innings. He went 3-0 with a 3.77 ERA and three saves in 23 appearance with 42 strikeouts in 28 and two-thirds innings in LSU’s national championship season of 2023. Last year, he was 2-0 with a 2.59 ERA in 22 appearances with 36 strikeouts in 24 and a third innings.
But Guidry, who has never pitched more than four innings in a game at LSU and started only one game in his career two years ago, wants to be a regular starter. Instead of finding another school and likely a lesser program that needs a starter via the portal, Guidry decided to transfer to new duties at LSU and stay. Pitching coach Nate Yeskie has worked with stretching Guidry’s pitching style for longer outings.
Guidry contended for a starting role in the rotation this spring, but he did not make the opening weekend rotation of left-hander Kade Anderson and right-handers Anthony Eyanson and Chase Shores. But he could start in mid-week games or in future weekends and may pitch longer relief, depending on how things go.
“Obviously, Gavin has done it,” LSU coach Jay Johnson said Wednesday. “Really like him in any point of the game.”
At another program, though, Guidry could be starting somewhere this weekend. But that was never on the table, and the thousands of players who will consider transfers in the future should take to heart what he says on the subject. Because it is not said enough.
“I mean, there was never really an option of going anywhere,” Guidry said last week. “This is where I came out of high school. I wasn’t going to run from any kind of competition or any kind of challenge. I chose here because it was the best place in college baseball to play baseball. And when you commit to a place like this, you’re also committing to the challenges that come with it.”
In other words, come hell or high water, he is staying out of the popular portal, which some have called the NCAA Quitter Portal, or the NCAA Backup Portal.
“In a time of college sports where transferring is the easier thing – and not that it’s necessarily a bad thing if people do transfer, because I think they get kind of a bad rap sometimes,” he said. “But it is easier to transfer at times. And I think sticking it out in the long run is going to help me, even if I don’t do what I want now.”
Too much emphasis is on the “now” with the portal. That is precisely what former Alabama football coach Nick Saban has often said about the portal, which is one of the main reasons he retired after the 2023 season, as expected. Rather than stick, players cut and run. And that hurts development in the long run.
“On the development side of it, it is not beneficial to the players,” Saban said of the portal on the Pat McAfee Show last December. “When you have to go out and compete, I don’t think you can be a good competitor if you can’t overcome adversity. That’s a part of being a good competitor.”
Guidry echoed that.
“I think staying at LSU is going to help me in the long run in pro baseball,” he said.
And if the starter role does not pan out, he can go back to relieving and closing.
“One reason I wanted to do it was the versatility,” Guidry said. “If you have the stamina to pitch seven innings, it’s easier to peel back and go back into a closer role. Being a closer again is a fallback plan if starting doesn’t work out.”
Even if Guidry never becomes a regular starter, he will have finished what he started at LSU.
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