<\/p>\n
The Royals (40-12) ran into the buzzsaw that was the LSU Shreveport Pilots in the Shreveport Bracket of the NAIA Opening Round in 2025. LSUS went on to win the World Series and finished out the year with a perfect 59-0 record.<\/span><\/p>\n This year, Johnson was a perfect 3-0 through the Salina Opening Round Bracket after fighting through the Appalachian Athletic Conference, which featured another World Series squad, Tennessee Wesleyan. The team was able to navigate the AAC and the Opening Round in large part to a roster led by upperclassmen who have been together for almost all of Serrano\u2019s tenure.<\/span><\/p>\n The Royals\u2019 starting lineup has just one player who\u2019s not a junior or senior. No player in the order has a batting average below .265. The one sophomore in the lineup, outfielder Luke Wilson, leads the team with a .369 batting average. He\u2019s struck out just 12 times in 203 at-bats across 52 games this season.<\/span><\/p>\n The offense isn\u2019t one that\u2019s predicated on power. The team has hit just 32 home runs this season, which was seventh in the AAC. Instead, it\u2019s fueled by getting on base and moving the runners at a high clip. A lineup Serrano described as \u201cWest Coast style\u201d baseball emblematic of his California-based coaching background.<\/span><\/p>\n As for Johnson\u2019s pitching staff, the team finished the season third in the AAC in ERA (4.56). The staff\u2019s biggest weakness is also arguably its biggest strength.<\/span><\/p>\n The Royals\u2019 three primary starters, senior Colby Reynolds, sophomore Jacob Jacome and graduate senior Tyler Barfield, pitch deep into games. The trio have combined to comprise 240 of 424 innings pitched for the staff.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI think the starting pitching has been good (and bad),\u201d Serrano said. \u201cAnd what I mean by bad is, they were so good for us throughout most of the year we weren\u2019t able to get real deep into pitching. There was many weekends that we would go and we would pitch five guys throughout the whole weekend. … It\u2019s been good and bad with the starting pitching, but that\u2019s been a strength (for us).\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s been a quick turnaround for Johnson from AAC basement dwellers to World Series competitors. Now, Johnson will look to complete the \u201crebuild\u201d and become champions.<\/span><\/p>\n > Johnson <\/span><\/p>\n Location: Kimberlin Heights, Tenn.<\/span><\/p>\n Nickname: Royals<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.dnews.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Royals (40-12) ran into the buzzsaw that was the LSU Shreveport Pilots in the Shreveport Bracket of the NAIA Opening Round in 2025. LSUS went on to win the World Series and finished out the year with a perfect 59-0 record. This year, Johnson was a perfect 3-0 through the Salina Opening Round Bracket […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2427752,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2427751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Johnson-hoping-team-unity-is-the-key.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2427751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2427751"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2427751\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2427753,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2427751\/revisions\/2427753"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2427752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2427751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2427751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2427751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}