BATON ROUGE - Head coach Paul Mainieri is entering his 13th season as the skipper for the LSU Tigers. Today he met with the media for his annual summer news conferencing addressing an abundance of topics. 

With the addition of nine new pitchers on the roster for 2019, Mainieri expressed his feelings of creating more depth for a pitching staff that wore thin last season.

"Obviously we needed to replenish our pitching staff," admitted Mainieri.

Last season the Tigers had to replace their entire weekend rotation from the year before, and it ended the season with several key players shut down for the season.

As of now, LSU will return 12 pitchers from last seasons roster and roughly 80 percent of it's innings pitched given the staff stays healthy.

Not only does LSU get Eric Walker back from Tommy John surgery, but the Tigers also added nine new arms in this years 16-man recruiting class.

"I very much expect that many of these guys in this incoming class are going to take on a significant role on our team and create the depth that is necessary for us to be a championship caliber team," Mainieri said. "You want to be outstanding at the top, but you also have to have depth and guys that can fill roles."

Mainieri mentioned Eric Walker has thrown three bullpen sessions this summer, all without incident. He expects the red-shirt sophomore who won eight games as a freshman to be a full go this fall.

Added to that: Mainieri said Nick Storz received a PRP injection this summer and has yet to pick up a baseball after being shut down this past season. A (PRP) stands for platelet-rich plasma which helps promote healing of injured tendons, ligaments, muscles, and joints.