BATON ROUGE, La. – The LSU baseball team opened preseason practice Friday in Alex Box Stadium, Skip Bertman Field, as the Tigers will hold 18 workouts over the next 21 days in preparation for the 2025 season opener.

LSU, ranked No. 3 in the D1 Baseball preseason poll, opens the season at 2 p.m. CT on Friday, February 14, when the Tigers play host to Purdue Fort Wayne in Alex Box Stadium, Skip Bertman Field.

Coach Jay Johnson, who guided the Tigers to the 2023 College World Series title, enters his fourth season at LSU with more championship aspirations.

He addressed the assembled media Friday in the Champions Club of Alex Box Stadium, as LSU conducted its annual preseason press conference.

“I don’t know that we’re a young team, but we’re a very new team,” Johnson said. “We only have 12 players that actually played in a game for us last season, but the presence of new players brings a lot of excitement to our program. We have a lot to figure out relative to where we’re going from a personnel standpoint. At the outset of the season, the goal is to win every game while determining what our ‘best team’ looks like.”

The 2025 Tigers feature seven returning position players with starting experience at LSU, including senior shortstop Michael Braswell III, senior outfielder Josh Pearson, junior first baseman Jared Jones, junior outfielder Ethan Frey, sophomore second baseman Steven Milam, sophomore outfielder Ashton Larson, and sophomore outfielder/left-handed pitcher Jake Brown.

The pitching staff contains six veteran hurlers who have recorded innings at LSU, including junior right-hander Gavin Guidry, junior right-hander Kade Woods, sophomore right-hander Chase Shores, sophomore right-hander Jaden Noot, sophomore left-hander Kade Anderson and sophomore left-hander DJ Primeaux.

LSU’s class of newcomers includes 12 NCAA Division I transfers, four JUCO transfers and 10 high school signees. Several LSU players were ranked in August among Baseball America magazine’s Top 100 College Transfers, and 11 Tigers appeared in the Baseball America Top 500 Prospects list for the 2024 MLB Draft.

The Top 100 College Transfers list included LSU junior infielder Daniel Dickinson, junior right-handed pitcher Anthony Eyanson, junior right-handed pitcher Jacob Mayers, junior right-handed pitcher Chandler Dorsey, junior right-handed pitcher Zac Cowan, senior catcher Luis Hernandez, senior outfielder/left-handed pitcher Dalton Beck and junior outfielder Chris Stanfield.

Stanfield was also among the LSU newcomers listed among the Top 500 Prospects for last summer’s MLB Draft, along with junior left-handed pitcher Conner Ware, freshman right-handed pitcher William Schmidt, freshman right-handed pitcher Casan Evans, freshman catcher Cade Arrambide, freshman infielder Mikey Ryan, freshman left-handed pitcher Cooper Williams, freshman right-handed pitcher Mavrick Rizy, freshman first baseman Ryan Costello, freshman outfielder John Pearson, and freshman infielder David Hogg II.

Freshman outfielder Derek Curiel would have been included on the top prospects list, but he declared his intention to enroll at LSU prior to the draft.

Johnson believes the 2025 Tigers are capable of maintaining the extraordinary standards of the LSU program.

“Emphasizing fundamentals, being highly competitive, valuing winning, and honoring what LSU Baseball has been about long before I got here, are the staples of our program,” Johnson explained. “Having character is also very important, because character influences the ability to make the right decisions as a young man.

“We have a lot of new guys who will be doing things this season for the first time, and they need the mental toughness to be locked into the task at hand. The players’ ability to respond to adversity with toughness, and focus on what’s relevant, will be critical. They’ve done a very good job since the start of the fall semester, they’ve been very coachable, and we’re very excited to get into the next three weeks.”