On Feb. 21, 2021, Houston Astros third baseman Alex Bregman might have predicted the future.
At the time, the former second-round pick out of LSU had already reached out to outfielder Dylan Crews, getting the freshman sensation’s number from former Tigers head coach Paul Mainieri and making himself available to offer advice to a player who’d become the school’s latest baseball legend.
“He really taught me how to soak in every day, be where my feet are and just enjoy every moment that I can,” Crews said. “He’s been in the same shoes as me, so that’s definitely somebody I listen to more.”
On that day in February 2021, though, Crews had yet to build his superstar pedigree. He was a highly-regarded recruit, but he was not yet a first-team All-American, not yet the first player ever to be honored as Southeastern Conference Player of the Year in back-to-back seasons.
Crews had just hit the first of his 57 career home runs as a Tiger, and LSU baseball tweeted a video of the blast against Air Force.
Even then, Bregman envisioned it: “1/1 in 3 years,” he replied to the tweet.
Now, at the end of Crews’ third prodigious season in Baton Rouge, Bregman’s forecast looks astute.
Crews appears likely to be the top overall selection in next month’s 2023 MLB Draft. Even more remarkable, the player who allowed Crews’ first home run might go right behind him. That pitcher, Paul Skenes, is now Crews’ teammate at LSU.
Together, the potential top two picks have the Tigers back at the College World Series in Omaha for the first time since 2017.
“They’re both not only two of the top college players I’ve ever seen, but they’re really close to being ready to move up to the big-league level,” Bregman told FOX Sports after FaceTiming with the LSU standouts last month. “They’re on the fast track.”
Skenes is the SEC Pitcher of the Year and Collegiate Baseball National Player of the Year, a junior transfer with a wicked slider who was still throwing 101 mph on his 124th pitch in a complete-game win against Tulane in the Baton Rouge regional earlier this month. Crews is, again, the SEC Player of the Year, a five-tool center fielder whose remarkable consistency has him hitting .433 with 17 home runs this year, despite often getting pitched around.
“It’s almost like they create a standard of nobody wants to let those two down,” head coach Jay Johnson said. “And now, all of a sudden, nobody wants to let anybody down. It’s one of the best player leadership groups I’ve had, and it starts with them holding the bar so high and everybody rising up to that.”
Johnson wasn’t worried about how Crews would handle the hype coming back this year after hitting .349 with 22 home runs in 2022. While Crews said he’s still learning how to be a more patient two-strike hitter, he currently sports an OPS over 1.300 with 61 walks to just 40 strikeouts in the most challenging conference in college baseball.
At LSU Media Day earlier this year, Johnson suggested that the Pittsburgh Pirates not think too hard with the first overall selection in the draft when they go on the clock July 9.
“I believe he’s the best player in the country,” Johnson said of Crews. “But just how he’s handled himself in the midst of everybody knowing he’s the best player in the country has served him well, and that will serve him well when he goes to the next level.”
For Crews, this was always the plan after pulling out of the draft his senior year of high school. That decision gave him an opportunity to create the legacy in Baton Rouge that he envisioned while improving his stock in the process.
He was the highest-ranked high school baseball player in the country to attend college in 2020. LSU took a chance on recruiting him, knowing it was likely he’d enter the draft. But the risk had reaped rewards before with Bregman and Kevin Gausman, among others. With Crews, it paid off again.
“What happened with Dylan was the summer before his senior year, he ran up against some really good arms,” Mainieri recalled. “Guys were throwing in the upper 90s, and he just got into a little bit of a rut, a little bit of a slump, which he had not experienced very frequently in his career.”
In a typical year, that might not have mattered. In 2020, however, it carried more weight.
With a pandemic-shortened five-round draft ahead, scouts had to make more projections. Teams simply couldn’t afford to whiff on a high school player who might turn down an offer. Crews didn’t want to take a chance.
“He really wanted to go to LSU anyway,” Mainieri said. “He really looked up to Alex Bregman and thought he could become an icon at LSU as well.”
So, Crews pulled his name out of the draft. Mainieri still remembers vividly when he got the news. On his way to campus, the LSU head coach pulled into a parking lot and screamed to himself gleefully. He believed in Crews’ potential. He felt the senior struggles were a red herring. It reminded him a bit of Bregman, whose senior year of high school was shortened by injury, allowing him to go the college route.
“I’ll never forget the day that our pitching coach Alan Dunn was actually out scouting, and he had seen Dylan play,” Mainieri recalled. “Dylan was already committed to us verbally, and Alan came back to the office and he said, ‘Man, that Dylan Crews kid … I never saw Mike Trout play in high school, but he reminds me of a young Mike Trout.’”
Mainieri, who retired after Crews’ freshman year, describes Crews as a humble kid who’s not much of a self-promoter. He’s also not the most loquacious superstar, despite an obvious self-belief and contagious confidence. While he may not talk much, he commands a room when he does.
“I’ve been told, ‘When you speak, people tend to listen,’” Crews said.
The same goes for Skenes, though he was always more of the vocal type. That probably served him well, considering his path to becoming a leader in the LSU clubhouse had to be fast-tracked.
Skenes played the 2021 and 2022 seasons at Air Force, where he was the recipient of the John Olerud Award as the best two-way player in college baseball. In 2022, he had a 2.96 ERA and 96 strikeouts in 85.2 innings while batting .314 with 13 homers.
If he had stayed at Air Force his junior year, he would have been required to finish his education there and potentially get enlisted for military service. With a career in baseball suddenly a realistic possibility, he decided to leave.
Skenes did not know at the time that he wouldn’t get to hit anymore. He misses it, but he understands the reasoning. His right arm has drawn comparisons to Stephen Strasburg. It is there, on the mound, where the 6-foot-6-inch right-hander will make his fortune.
At LSU, Skenes quickly endeared himself to his teammates. Early on, he began searching online for one of his teammate’s jerseys and found a shirt with infielder Cade Beloso’s face on it. The shirt sat in Skenes’ room for a few weeks before he decided to wear it to the field. Beloso loved it. From then on, Skenes decided to wear a shirt with a different teammate’s face on it every week.
“I think that’s kind of an indication of the culture as a whole,” Skenes said. “If it’s a bunch of guys that I don’t know, I wouldn’t do that. The stuff that we did in the fall and the winter to grow as a team obviously worked if that’s something that’s kind of acceptable and part of the culture there. I think the amount of love and the deepness of our relationships that we have in our locker room, it’s really cool.”
Skenes adapted quickly both on and off the mound. Off it, he enjoyed the more lenient facial hair policy at LSU. He now sports a mustache that he plans to keep.
On it, more importantly, he developed efficiently into LSU’s Friday night ace and the top pitcher in the nation. Pitching coach Wes Johnson, who previously served the same role with the Minnesota Twins, helped Skenes better understand his mechanics and pitch design. Skenes began to learn what made him successful. His slider became nearly untouchable.
In 17 starts at LSU, Skenes is 12-2 with a 1.77 ERA and 188 strikeouts in 107 innings.
“Obviously, I’ve gotten physically stronger,” Skenes said. “I’m throwing harder. My stuff’s better. But I think my awareness of how to pitch and use my stuff has gotten tremendously better.”
Jay Johnson took that one step further.
In 2009, he was a coach at the University of San Diego when Strasburg, San Diego State’s ace, struck his team out 18 times over eight innings. Johnson always considered Strasburg the best college pitcher he had seen.
Until he saw Skenes accomplish what he did this year.
“There’s not a player in the country that has more positively impacted a team or a program over the last eight or nine months than Paul,” Johnson said. “Obviously, the on-the-field contributions, you can’t do any better than that. Leadership, he’s the unquestioned leader of our team.”
Both Skenes and Crews played vital roles in getting LSU back to the College World Series, where the Tigers will be seeking their first title since Mainieri’s 2009 group.
Skenes tossed a complete game against Tulane in the regional before firing 7.2 scoreless innings against Kentucky in the first game of the super regionals, moving into second place in strikeouts on LSU’s all-time single-season list in the process. His 188 strikeouts lead the nation.
Crews, meanwhile, has reached base in 67 consecutive games, including all 63 games he played this year. He’ll head to Omaha on a 13-game hitting streak after going 8-for-13 with two homers in the regionals and 3-for-6 with a double, four walks and four RBI in the super regionals.
A few weeks later, Crews and Skenes could make even rarer history as the first players to go Nos. 1 and 2 (Washington Nationals) overall from the same college program in the MLB Draft.
“[Dylan] used to say to me, ‘I want to come to LSU and be an icon like Alex Bregman and some of the other great players,’” Mainieri said. “But he’s done that. Honestly, the only thing missing on his resume is going to Omaha and hopefully winning a national championship.”
Rowan Kavner covers the Dodgers and NL West for FOX Sports. He previously was the Dodgers’ editor of digital and print publications. Follow him on Twitter at @RowanKavner.
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