Jay Johnson 'really excited' about LSU's 2025 roster following MLB Draft

Following the MLB Draft, as the waves of roster movement continue in college baseball, LSU head coach Jay Johnson addressed the pandemonium of assembling the Tiger roster as dust finally begins to settle.

Johnson joined the Mik’d Up podcast with Mikie Mahtook and reviewed the recent draft while giving a long answer on how the 2025 LSU roster has taken shape.

“Yeah, so I thought it was a great draft,” he began in his discussion with Mahtook. The LSU coach really stressed the importance of getting these kids to the pros when it comes to the program as a whole.

“I think, you know, obviously the winning tradition here is super important. How we win is really important to me and how we win is by developing and getting guys ready for Major League Baseball,” Johnson explained.

“So, seeing nine players achieve their dream of taking the next step in their professional baseball career is awesome. 22 in the last two years is remarkable. And I think, by a large margin, the most in the country, and something that we’re super proud of.”

For LSU, the backbone of success is great players, and great players means future pros.

“A lot of those guys have really good stories of how they got to that point, so that’s really the first thing,” Johnson continued. “And I want to make sure we celebrate those guys.”

But at the same time he’s trying to turn dreams into reality for former players, Johnson also has to scramble to put together the roster for next season.

“It’s an interesting time, because you’re trying to celebrate that, and it has such a bearing on your next team just in terms of what you have to start with, so to speak.” However, he likes where the Tigers are. “I thought it was a really successful deal.”

Johnson went on to detail the Tigers’ multi-phased roster-building process and explained why he likes the ’25 team so much.

“I mean, we had a great high school recruiting class. We knew we were going to lose some of those guys. Really good additions through the portal. We only lost one of those guys, which you know, we kind of knew that was probably going to happen, even when we we got him.

“So you know, I don’t know if you grade it. You certainly can’t right now. All that matters is what happens on the field in the spring. But I’m really excited about the roster.”

That was not the case in the immediate aftermath of the 2024 season, where Johnson was initially worried about the state of the group for the next year.

“We had a long way to go, frankly, from when we ended the season, and I think at one point we had 11 returning players,” Johnson recalled. “Obviously, getting a couple of these guys back that maybe we didn’t expect helped. Then, the guys we added in the portal, too,” he added.

The freshmen were also key for LSU. Guys like William Schmidt and other top Tiger commits make the choice to come to college over staying in the MLB Draft, which is a boost for LSU in 2025.

“We obviously needed to do good with the high school guys getting to campus. And I’m super proud of some of them for having conviction and their belief in themselves to come to LSU and delay the gratification of a little bag of money, as I like to call it, and dive into this thing.”

With a pretty solid roster built through several avenues, Jay Johnson is ready to head in 2025 with a shot to compete.

“So, really excited to get to fall and take this good collection of talent and make it a team. We got a lot of work to do.”