Jay Johnson confident in LSU baseball championship aspirations going through SEC

Jay Johnson is ready to reach the ultimate heights with LSU once again as the 2025 college baseball season approaches.

Roster turnover following the 2023 championship season was evident. Although the Tigers made it back to the NCAA Tournament, the College World Series was well out of reach.

Johnson is ready to ensure that doesn’t happen in Year 4 in Baton Rouge.

“I think, a complete team, and we had a lot of work to do as we sat at the end of the year,” Johnson said on Sirius XM. “I mean, we’ve moved 23 players on to Major League Baseball in the past two seasons, and so … inevitably (there comes) a year with a lot of turnover. We have the right guys back from last year’s team.

“You know, I think there’s five or six of them that basically played most of the time in the field. Kade Anderson, you know, going to be in the rotation for sure. Really was an excellent pitcher for us down the stretch as a freshman last year … So there’s, there’s a good core back, even though it’s not a lot of numbers.” 

It’s not just the players LSU returned from the 2024 team. Johnson knows the young bucks can step up in a big way this spring.

“And then it was a good freshman class. Can we get them through the draft? In my opinion, it’s easily the top, you know, recruiting class we’ve had at LSU since I’ve been here,” Johnson said. “So, excited about those guys for the next couple years. And just our league has turned into a very old and it’s big boy baseball all the time. And so we needed some experience, and I, like the players, were able to get, you know, out of the portal, to blend a complete team.” 

After a 54-17 season in 2023 capped off with a title, LSU went just 43-23 last season, which ended in the NCAA Regional.

“Because, you know, winning in the SEC is sometimes a little different than winning in Omaha, and we want to play a brand of baseball that isn’t one dimensional if you will,” Johnson said. “If it’s 2-1, we feel very comfortable in that type of game. If it’s 13 -9, we feel comfortable in that type of game. And I think this team is built in a way that we should be able to win in a number of different ways, and you have to have that in our league, for sure.”

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