Baseball Loses Two Assistant Coaches

The 2023 LSU baseball coaching staff will look vastly different from this past season.

Pitching coach Jason Kelly (Washington) and third base coach/lead recruiter Dan Fitzgerald (Kansas) have both accepted head coaching jobs after just one season in Baton Rouge.

Prior to LSU, Kelly spent seven seasons with Washington as the Huskies’ pitching coach. Kelly was named the assistant coach of the year by D1Baseball.com and helped Washington make their first ever trip to the College World Series in 2018. Kelly would leave Washington in 2020 for Arizona State where he held the title of pitching coach for two seasons before arriving at LSU.

While pitching wasn’t the Tigers strength, Kelly was able to get the most out of what he had to work with. As a staff LSU finished fourth in the SEC in both team ERA (4.09) and opposing batting average (.235). LSU finished eighth and ninth respectively in those two categories in 2021.

Now that Johnson is in the market for a pitching coach, the first call I would make is to the team that eliminated LSU: Southern Miss pitching coach Christian Ostrander. USM had the No. 2 staff ERA in the entire country this season and unless he wants a head coaching job, LSU could easily outbid Southern Miss for his services.

Fitzgerald, meanwhile, takes over the head coaching job at Kansas after building quite the reputation as a recruiter. Thanks to Fitzgerald, LSU signed the No. 1 recruiting class this season; prior to LSU, Fitzgerald spent nine seasons at Dallas Baptist University where he was thought of as one of the best recruiters in the country. DBU had 69 (nice.) players make All-Missouri Valley teams under Fitzgerald, nine earn All-American honors, and eight earn Freshman All-American.