LSU right-hander Thatcher Hurd finding his footing out of the bullpen

Right-hander Thatcher Hurd arrived at LSU as the second-most highly anticipated pitching transfer last summer.

In his last season at UCLA — a pitching factory with alumni such as Gerrit Cole and Trevor Bauer — Hurd held a 1.06 ERA through 34 innings, but a rare genetic back injury ended campaign prematurely.

He arrived at LSU as an expected member of the starting rotation, but Hurd’s season has been up and down. But at the moment, he’s trending up after closing out LSU’s 3-0 victory over Auburn on Friday night with a 1-2-3 inning.

“To be honest, I don’t think the shift has been as big as people think it would be,” LSU starting pitcher Paul Skenes said of Hurd’s recent uptick. “He’s always been confident. He’s always believed in himself. He’s always had just power, power stuff, but I just feel like a lot of the time things just don’t go right.

“To be able to stay the course is obviously super tough. But he’s done that and that speaks so much to who he is as a person and as a player.”

The Tigers have lost three pitchers to UCL tears this season, including Grant Taylor, Garrett Edwards and Chase Shores. Both Edwards and Shores were key pieces of a bullpen that started the year as a strength of the team, so Hurd’s resurgence could be key to LSU’s postseason longevity.

Hurd made his first start against Southern on Feb. 21, but it didn’t go as expected. He gave up four runs on six hits through two innings.

“I think he’s a frontline pitcher and has the stuff to do that,” LSU coach Jay Johnson said after that game. “He has the competitive character and makeup, and we’ll get him there.”

He rebounded with a successful outing the next week, shutting out Texas through 4⅔ innings. He’d pile up strikeouts against Butler and Samford in following non-conference series, but his first Southeastern Conference appearance as a Sunday starter didn’t follow suit. His ERA through 5⅓ innings combined while starting against Texas A&M, Arkansas and Tennessee was 20.25. He didn’t record an out against Tennessee.

Hurd worked out of the bullpen in midweek games and against Kentucky until he started again April 25 against Nicholls State, where he gave up one earned run on three hits while striking out five and walking two through four innings. Since then, he’s worked 2⅔ scoreless innings of relief against Alabama and Auburn entering Saturday’s game.

“I told him after the game, ‘I can’t wait to watch you do it again this weekend,’ ” Skenes said Friday. “Selfishly, I wish I were here next year to watch him do it as a teammate, but I can’t wait to watch him do it next year, too.”

Not to make excuses, but Hurd doesn’t have a lot of experience as a pitcher. He played most of his high school career as a catcher, and pitching was something he started messing around with during the COVID-19 shutdown.

“I had thrown here and there, just kind of trying to throw as hard as I could, but then over the quarantine, I really started to get into pitching more,” Hurd said Feb. 3. “I was getting pretty frustrated with hitting, and pitching was clicking. So my first year of fully being a pitcher was my senior year of high school.”

Johnson has reiterated that Hurd lacks experience on the pitching side, but he has the stuff to help the Tigers win games.

It just might be in a way that no one anticipated — out of the bullpen.

“He’s got unbelievable stuff, and sometimes we talk about not wanting to waste any kind of failure or loss and learn from it,” Johnson said after a 12-8 victory over Alabama on April 29 in which Hurd retired the final batters in order. “From a pitching and executing standpoint, him and (pitching coach) Wes (Johnson) have worked hard since he’s gotten here. Then I just think having some experience in this environment, some success early at Texas and some failure. I just think he’s grown.”