Johnson balancing super regional play, transfer portal during crucial time
06/07/2025
By Hunt Palmer
The 2025 LSU Tigers stand on Omaha’s doorstep.
Still, Jay Johnson has to give some consideration to future teams as Super Regional play approaches. On Tuesday, college baseball’s transfer portal opened to a flurry of talented players looking for a new home. LSU, more so that most programs, has benefitted from high profile transfers over the last four seasons.
Paul Skenes and Tommy White made the headlines, but players like Riley Cooper and Thatcher Hurd were instrumental in LSU’s 2023 title run. This version of the Tigers earned a national seed with huge contributions from Anthony Eyanson, Daniel Dickinson, Chris Stanfield and others.
“There’s a team, and there’s a program,” LSU head coach Jay Johnson said. “My focus right now is on this team and helping this team be successful this weekend. Otherwise, there was no point in bringing them here in the first place. That’s the priority.”
Johnson mentioned Friday that he certainly made some phone calls on Tuesday to some prospective transfers. As many as seven of LSU’s starters in Saturday’s Super Regional game with West Virginia will depart after the season, and the ace duo of Eyanson and Kade Anderson will move on to professional baseball.
Plenty of talented pieces will return, but the transfer portal will have to supplement the roster.
“Tuesday, I think it started,” Johnson said. “It was a day right after we played that I could devote a little more time to (the transfer portal) that day, and really Wednesday, outside of a couple of phone calls, my focus has been on this and our team training and West Virginia and what does Chris Stanfield need to do to this weekend. And there’s no better recruiting pitch than playing on TV this weekend because there’s only 16 of us.”
Johnson famously worked the phone lines from Omaha in 2023. While his team was preparing daily for massively important games, he was recruiting the 2024 team. Ultimately, the Tigers emerged as the national champions, but that didn’t come without a very small cost.
“You gotta pay attention,” Johnson said. “We lost a player because we were playing in the championship series of the College World Series. They went on a visit to somebody that wasn’t playing and cancelled their visit during the national championship celebration. I still don’t know how that works out, but we’ll end up with the right players. We don’t need all the players at LSU, we just need the right players at LSU.”