LSU is the first program to have three different men win the award, which has been awarded since 1981. He is the third LSU coach to win the award, joining Skip Bertman (19) and Paul Mainieri (2009). With LSU executing in all phases, it went on to win the national championship, the program’s seventh and first since 2009, in Johnson’s second season as head coach.įor those reasons and more, Johnson is the 2023 Baseball America Coach of the Year.
While many questions were raised outside the locker room about the quality and depth of the team’s pitching staff, the Tigers stuck together and in Omaha proved just how good they were when they held opponents to six total runs in four must-win games.Īs well as Johnson recruited and organized the Tigers’ player development for the 2023 season, he also deftly managed the team’s chemistry and makeup. Players were moved in and out of the lineup and the rotation without public complaint. They lost just two series and had just one losing week-the SEC Tournament. 1 in the first 12 iterations of the Top 25, the longest such streak to start a season in a decade. In the end, the 2023 season was largely drama free for LSU.
Others questioned how the Tigers would handle the losses that are inevitable in a baseball season, losses that might test the team’s bonds and ratchet up the noise in Baton Rouge and beyond. Many wondered how he could keep everyone happy when there were still just 27 outs a game and nine spots in the batting order to go around. Having built the monster, Johnson now had to manage it through a challenging five-month season. This was what Johnson’s success as a recruiter and the built-in lofty standards of one of the sport’s biggest brands had wrought. At the team’s preseason banquet, Alex Bregman introduced Johnson and charged him with winning the 2023 national championship. When the dust settled at the beginning of August and the players began returning to campus, the hype began to explode.
Johnson hired Wes Johnson, then the pitching coach for the Twins, and Josh Jordan, the 2018 Assistant Coach of the Year, to replace Dan Fitzgerald (Kansas) and Jason Kelly (Washington), who had both been hired away to be head coaches. Draft-eligible players like Cade Beloso and Ty Floyd decided to return for another season in Baton Rouge. The Tigers brought in the top-ranked transfer and traditional recruiting classes. All-Americans Paul Skenes and Tommy White transferred in. Over the course of two months, coach Jay Johnson kept adding piece after piece to the team. The Tigers were a 40-win team in 2022 and were returning outfielder Dylan Crews, the SEC co-player of the year and the early favorite to be the first overall pick in the 2023 draft.
The buzz around the 2023 LSU Tigers built steadily over the course of last summer. Jay Johnson (Photo by Michael Wade/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
0 kommentar(er)
