**The quotes in this story come from Jay Johnson’s conversation with Matt Moscona on Monday’s After Further Review on 104.5 ESPN Baton Rouge. Watch the full interview here.
Reality television and live sports draw large audiences.
Jay Johnson saw an opportunity over the weekend as his players and recruits fielded phone calls from Major League Baseball organizations offering six and seven figure signing bonuses. His job was to convince the signees that LSU was the place for them.
“I wish we did like a Netflix documentary on like the last 72 hours,” Johnson joked on After Further Review with Matt Moscona. “I think we could make some money off of it. It was high stakes is the way I would say it.”
Johnson’s program emerged with a pair of great stories to tell and a host of young talent headed to Baton Rouge to infuse life into a program coming off of a disappointing season.
In two of his five seasons at LSU, Johnson has coached to the final day of the season, holding up the national championship trophy at the College World Series. This year, the Tigers’ 9-21 SEC record meant sitting out of the postseason and pouring every resource into recruiting the next team to chase a title.
“I would never use winning national championships as an excuse of what you do or you don’t do in recruiting the transfer portal or preparing for the draft, but I never really realized how different it was to do this when you’re not playing,” Johnson said. “And it’s massively different. And I think our coaching staff has used that time, extra time, as good as we possibly could. Now, I never want to have that extra time ever again. But, I think we’ve responded well to whatever you want to call it, disappointment, failure, adversity, the way you’re supposed to if you’re a winner.”
The fireworks started for LSU before a single pick was made on Saturday. Friday night, Lucas Nawrocki, a left-handed pitcher and hitter, decided to pull out of the draft completely. He was ticketed for Baton Rouge.
The win was a huge one for Johnson and LSU.
“That’s a massive deal for our program, and you’ll see why when he gets here,” Johnson said. “It’s just more than talent. It’s a guy that I think has that “it factor” competitiveness that you need to be a star at LSU, and we’re doing the two-way thing so that was obviously a great start to the weekend.”
Nawrocki brings a powerful left-handed swing, but it’s the arm that may yield the first dividends.
LSU’s weekend rotation didn’t feature a left-handed pitcher last season, and that group returns. Perhaps LSU’s best left-handed bullpen option, Santiago Garcia, was drafted and is likely to move on to professional baseball.
That does leave LSU with some returning southpaw bullpen options, but none of them enjoyed strong seasons in 2026.
LSU tried to address that in the transfer portal and came up a little bit short.
“We tried really hard to get (a lefty),” Johnson said. “We actually went after 10 players in the portal, and we got eight of them. One of the two we didn’t get was a left-handed pitcher. And you never know what’s around the corner, like getting Lucas to school.”
Nawrocki doesn’t fix all the left-handed concerns. He’s just one freshman. It’ll take more.
“We’re really excited about Braxton Beaty,” Johnson said. “I think he’s got a little Gage Jump in him. Bradyn Cupit. And then Jonah Aase missed last year. So, we actually have seven on the roster. And the other thing, too, is, next year’s team, the returning players need to play better. That’s a big part of this thing. And when you look at Cooper Williams, Danny Lachenmayer, Ethan Plog, like those guys are far more talented than the performance that they gave last year. And I I’m confident we’re going to get bit more out of them.”
The slightly surprising haul in terms of numbers leaves LSU’s roster above the 34-man limit. However, there are rules in place like the “Designated Student-Athlete” provision which allows LSU to exceed the cap if there are athletes in the program who may have been roster casualties because the new 34-man limit as season ago.
LSU reportedly tagged some of last’s year’s players as Designated Student Athletes who will not count against the 34 this spring.
“Yeah, we’re all set,” Johnson said. “We’ll probably have 39 players in the fall, and it’s all set with the designated student athlete thing from last year.”
