LSU baseball coach admits roster "mistakes" after another loss

LSU baseball suffered another loss on Friday night. The Tigers fell to Texas A&M in the series opener, marking LSU's fifth loss in six games. LSU is 23-16 overall, and in jeopardy of missing the NCAA Tournament.

LSU head coach Jay Johnson didn't mince words after the game. He was direct, making sharp comments about this team's roster construction.

"I made some mistakes in constructing the team and trying to replace two guys that were irreplaceable, where we should have looked for replacing them through guys that were already in the program, and then replaced the guys that were athletic and could play defense and be more complete players. Okay? We won't make that mistake again."

Johnson is referencing the losses of Jared Jones and Ethan Frey, two middle-of-the-order bats that supplied the power for LSU on its national title run in 2025. Johnson and LSU hit the portal in search of power, but Johnson now says that wasn't the best use of resources.

Johnson will look for professional, trustworthy hitters on the portal and lean on in-house talent for home runs.

"The power moving forward will come from players that start their career here and develop into it, like (Jake Brown) has," Johnson said.

When the 2025 portal opened, LSU signed Zach Yorke, hoping the big lefty's home run ability would translate to the SEC. That didn't happen, and now Yorke is a bench player for the Tigers. Other transfers like Seth Dardar, Brayden Simpson, and Trent Caraway haven't found consistency, either.

"I can't do anything about that now, but what I can do is try to get them to understand, Texas A&M, a top-five team, won the game tonight because they hit the ball hard and low the other way. When did we do it one time?" Johnson said.