So what are we to make of this suddenly revitalized LSU baseball team as it prepares to travel to Arkansas?

Buoyed by a three-game sweep at Mississippi State, the outlook at 7-5 in the Southeastern Conference and winners of six of the last eight is certainly different than after the 1-3 start in the league.

More importantly, perhaps, a definitive identity has started to emerge, a formula, if you will, for winning.

It’s not the bats, although the Tigers are one of the SEC’s best hitting teams, second best in average and runs scored.

But they are probably too dependent on the home run for their own good and have trouble manufacturing runs when a hot pitcher is on the mound or an ill wind is blowing cold.

Friday night’s dramatic comeback victory in Starkville was sort of a combination of both, and if this resurgence has some shelf life, it will be that game that will be marked as the turning point.

Down to a strike trailing 2-1 in the ninth, facing two outs and a 1-2 count, Hayden Travinski worked a walk out of it and Josh Stevenson got himself hit by a pitch, which the Tigers do more and better than any team in the country. They moved up a base on wild pitch and both scored on Tré Morgan’s single to give LSU a 3-2 lead. Dylan Crews then hit one halfway to Memphis for the eventual 5-2 cushion.

The final two runs were more LSU’s style.

The Tigers have exactly one (1) stolen base in SEC games and anything out of the ordinary — say, a simple hit and run — risks hijinks that might put half the lineup and many innocent fans in the hospital.

So swing for the fences, they do, unapologetically, hoping for the best. Tough to count on every night, though.

And you already knew about the comical defense.

It kind of stayed out of its own way in the sweep of Mississippi State, or at least didn’t step in anything for a change.

One might even, for that weekend at least, have termed that shaky defense as “average to OK.”

That was quite an upgrade from “slapstick,” of course, but the suspicion here is that it was also probably the ceiling for their antics as they mostly stumble merrily along in a season-long quest to eliminate the term “routine ground ball” from the LSU language.

Get used to it. Deal with it. They will probably have to work around it most of the year.

But LSU, somewhat gradually, has found something it really can hang its ballcap on.

It might even be the Tigers’ identity, and from an odd source.

The starting pitching has been pretty much OK, better some games than others, but good enough to win most nights or keep it close at any rate.

But the key to whatever success the Tigers are having of late has been …

“The story was the bullpen,” first-year head coach Jay Johnson said after the Mississippi State sweep. “We stranded a million (MSU) runners. Every guy that came in did the job right at the time we needed it.”

It was nothing new. True, it’s not as sexy as home runs or Friday night aces.

But in SEC play that bullpen has been effective, efficient and very deep. Good thing, too, especially the deep part.

Johnson isn’t shy about it. He’s seemingly has a quicker hook from the dugout than the quick draws in the Wild West shows from where he came in Arizona.

It doesn’t stop with yanking starters — once the bullpen parade starts, with the first hint of trouble, it’s rinse and repeat with another new arm.

In 12 SEC games, Johnson has made the call to the bullpen 40 times — an average of almost 3.5 relievers per game. There’s roughly a half-dozen arms, seemingly in no particular order, that he has complete confidence in.

Partly, perhaps, he seems to put even more stock than most in righty-lefty matchups.

But LSU’s starting pitching in SEC games has a pedestrian ERA of 6.07, rarely lasting more than 4-5 innings. The bullpen, which has pitched 572/3 of the 107 SEC innings, has an ERA of 2.34.

In the three games against Mississippi State it was 1.20 — two earned runs in 15 innings pitched (and, take a bow, defense, no unearned runs).

That was on 11 calls to the bullpen, with Eric Reyzelman, Riley Cooper and Paul Gervase getting into two games.

“You can do that when you’re efficient with the strike zone,” Johnson said.

It was historic — for the first time in its history, LSU swept an SEC series with relievers getting credit for all three wins.

Yes, get used to it, that bullpen has become the face of the team.

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Scooter Hobbs covers LSU athletics. Email him at scooter.hobbs@americanpress.com