Cooper Moore, Jake Brown to Miss Remainder of 2026

BATON ROUGE, LA - JUNE 8: Jake Brown #7 of the LSU Tigers in action against the West Virginia Mountaineers during the NCAA Baton Rouge Super Regional on June 8, 2025 at Alex Box Stadium in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. (Photo by Alex Diaz/LSU/University Images via Getty Images)

It’s been a brutal 24 hours or so for Jay Johnson and the 2026 LSU baseball team.

If the product on the field wasn’t bad enough, somehow things have gotten even worse off of it, and at this point I think LSU’s title defense is now entering “season from hell territory.” Last night on his radio show, Jay Johnson confirmed that starting pitcher Cooper Moore would miss the rest of the regular season.

Moore last pitched against Oklahoma a month ago, but exited that outing after four innings after what was initially believed to be tricep tightness in his right arm. A second medical opinion, however, revealed the Moore has a stress fracture in his right elbow and it will require surgery.

LSU was hoping to have Moore back for this past weekend against Texas A&M. Instead, Moore will need four to five months to recover; if there is a silver lining for LSU it’s that Moore will receive a medical redshirt for this season, and he intends to return to LSU in 2027. Even better for Moore is that he will still be considered a junior for 2027, and thus retain his leverage ahead of the 2027 MLB Draft.

“The thought was that he could throw through it,” Johnson said on his radio show Monday. “But what this (surgery) does is it allows him to medical redshirt and allow him to still be a junior next year.”

While one could maybe look at the glass half full with Moore, there’s no sugarcoating LSU’s other bit of news: Jake Brown’s season is most likely over.

Johnson confirmed the news to The Advocate on Tuesday. Brown broke his hamate bone in his right wrist. According to Johnson, the injury happened in Brown’s third at bat of Sunday’s game against Texas A&M.