The Jay Johnson era at Arizona has come to an end.
After six seasons at the UA, Johnson has agreed to become the next coach at LSU, the Star has confirmed. D1Baseball.com first reported the news Thursday.
Despite a second College World Series appearance in five tries — and a Wildcats roster teeming with high-upside talent — Johnson couldn’t resist the lure of one of college baseball’s premier coaching jobs.
Arizona posted a 208-114 record under Johnson, including a national runner-up finish in 2016 and a Pac-12 championship this past season. The Wildcats were knocked out of the CWS on Monday.
Johnson, 44, reportedly interviewed for the LSU job Tuesday. He succeeds Paul Mainieri, who retired after 15 seasons in Baton Rouge.
UA athletic director Dave Heeke wanted to keep Johnson on board and said the two would talk about a contract extension after the 2021 season ended. A strong push was made to keep Johnson in Tucson via a reworked deal, but the attraction of the LSU opportunity proved too strong.
Heeke, a former college catcher and chair of the NCAA Division I Baseball Selection Committee, is a big baseball advocate and will begin the search for a new coach immediately. One possible candidate is associate head coach/pitching coach Nate Yeskie, although Texas A&M reportedly is pursuing Yeskie to be its pitching coach. Other possible candidates could include UC Santa Barbara coach Andrew Checketts and former UA standout Chip Hale, the former Diamondbacks manager who’s currently the third-base coach for the Detroit Tigers.
Jay Johnson
Johnson had two years left on his UA contract and will owe the school the sum of his 2022 and ’23 salaries — approximately $1.09 million. It’s likely that LSU will take care of that payment as part of Johnson’s deal with the school. Johnson will also forfeit the 20,000 shares of a longevity fund that he was due to receive in 2022 and 2023; those shares were worth $350,871 earlier this week.
LSU is expected to announce Johnson’s hiring on Friday.
Johnson was the sixth UA head baseball coach of the modern era (post-1950). His .646 winning percentage ranks second in that group behind Frank Sancet (.741). Johnson is the only one to leave for a job at another school.
Johnson came to Arizona in June 2015, succeeding Andy Lopez, who retired. Johnson had spent the previous two seasons at Nevada, where he compiled a 72-42 record.
The Wildcats were picked to finish ninth in the Pac-12 in Johnson’s first season, but they shocked the college baseball world by making it to the CWS finals. Arizona lost in three games to Coastal Carolina, leaving the winning run on second base in the ninth inning.
Arizona again made it to the NCAA Tournament in 2017 but couldn’t make it out of the Lubbock Regional. The Wildcats fell just short in 2018 and ‘19. They had one of the best offenses in the country in 2019, and their failure to make the postseason prompted Johnson to hire Yeskie away from Oregon State.
Arizona was off to a promising start in 2020, posting a 10-5 record before the season was canceled because of the pandemic.
Buoyed by a strong freshman class, the Wildcats ascended to the nation’s top 10 this past season. They won the Pac-12 title, swept the Tucson Regional and defeated Ole Miss in the Super Regionals at Hi Corbett Field. Arizona lost its CWS opener against defending national champion Vanderbilt 7-6 in 12 innings. The UA was eliminated from the tournament by Stanford on Monday.
