Dylan Widger-Imagn Images
By Hunt Palmer
OMAHA, Neb.–I watched Jared Jones hit 40 sliders off a pitching machine on Sunday.
LSU’s team has loaded the busses from practice. Only Jared Jones remains on the field. pic.twitter.com/A7q3vpH1ZQ
— Hunt Palmer (@HuntPalmer88) June 15, 2025
As his teammates loaded their gear and boarded the bus, Jones and Jay Johnson remained on the practice field. They talked. Jones swung.
VVVomp. Ping!
VVVomp. Ping!
VVVomp. Ping!
As the pitching machine hurled spinner after spinner at Jones, he planted his chin in his lead shoulder and swatted pitches back up the middle and to right field. It was just a player and a coach working.
Cameras caught it. I saw it.
“Coach Johnson and I have had several heart-to-heart conversations throughout my career here at LSU,” Jones said. “I put so much time and effort into this sport throughout my life. My parents have sacrificed so much to get me to this position…I’m just super grateful for it all and wouldn’t have It any other way.”
Johnson commented on the video postgame.
“Somebody put a video out of us working after practice, and really all we were doing was doing what we do in Baton Rouge,” Johnson said. “It’s more just something to get him lined up and in tune with what makes him the best hitter. And then he has the character to go out and do it.”
Hours before practice Jones had whiffed his way through the worst game of his phenomenal LSU career. He struck out five times in five at bats, flailing over every slider Zach Root, Gabe Gaeckle and Christian Foutch had to offer in LSU’s 4-1 win over Arkansas.
Three days later, Luis Hernandez led off second base representing the run that would send LSU to the College World Series final with two outs in the bottom of the ninth.
Aiden Jimenez peered toward the catcher’s mitt and came set.
Slider.
Jones loaded, identified the spinner, closed off his front side and shortened his swing. The hulking first baseman sunk into his knees and dropped the barrel to the inside of the back of the baseball.
Ping!
The line drive back up the middle began rising and crested just off the top of Arkansas second baseman Cam Kozeal’s glove and into centerfield to clinch the winner.
“They bought in Jimenez, and he’s a great pitcher,” Jones said. “Gotta respect his slider. Was able to just stay on it and do just enough to get it over the second baseman’s head.”
Jones threw both hands into the air as he rounded first, and when his teammates were done mobbing him, he was halfway to the centerfield wall.
For a program dripping with indelible Omaha moments, Jones has his.
“I thought he had caught, honestly, because it kind of fell in behind him,” Jones said of the final play. “But then once I saw the ball hit the grass I just blacked out in the moment just celebrating with my teammates.”
In July of 2024, there was a decision to be made about his baseball future. Jones decided to turn down the professional ranks and remain at LSU.
“Jared came back to do what we’re doing right now, being in the front of that, not just driving in runs but as a leader,” Johnson said. “He’s been tremendous in the regard, set the way for the team.”
Late into this 2025 season, Jones remarked that he “didn’t play much” for the 2023 national champions. He said he want to come back for a College World Series run that he felt more central two.
First, Jones played in 55 games in 2023 and hit .304 with 13 homers. He was part of the reason LSU got to play all its postseason games at Alex Box Stadium prior to Omaha. He didn’t start a College World Series game, but he damn sure helped LSU get there.
Second, if his goal was to be central to an Omaha run, mission accomplished.
Since the 0-for-5, five strikeout game, Jones has gone 5-for-9 with two home runs and six RBI over two games versus UCLA and Arkansas.
His three-run blast into the teeth of the midwestern wind on Monday turned a 3-1 UCLA lead into a 4-3 LSU lead the Tigers never relinquished.
He added an insurance run with a sharp opposite field single in the eighth.
On Wednesday, he took Gabe Gaeckle, who struck him out three times Saturday and once in a crucial spot Wednesday, out of the ballpark on a 96 mph fastball that left the bat at 108 mph.
“I hadn’t been seeing Gaeckle very well this week,” Jones said. “He struck me out like five times in five at bats (four, but we’ll forgive Jones’s memory after that game), and it was all on sliders. And my approach is always to be on time for a fastball. I was lucky enough to get one in the zone and put a good swing on it.”
Ping!
That blast tied things in the eighth and pumped life back into a shellshocked LSU team that had a lead just minutes before and Chase Shores throwing BBs on the mound.
Jones was a prized member of Johnson’s first full signing class at LSU. His career will wrap as the third-most prodigious power hitter in LSU history and will be the standard for all three-year players when it comes to power.
This year he passed names like Todd Walker, Blake Dean, Dylan Crews and Trey McClure on the home run list.
All four of those players have been written into the lineup card in a national championship-clinching game.
Jones has one thing left to do—join them.
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