Michael Braswell returns to LSU for senior season
The good times continue to roll for LSU head coach Jay Johnson as starting shortstop Michael Braswell announced his return to LSU Monday evening on social media.
Braswell’s return locks down the shortstop position for 2025 and gives the Tigers flexibility in the lineup moving forward as Braswell had a much improved year at the plate. Johnson and his LSU teammates quickly built a belief in him and he rode that to a strong season in Baton Rouge.
“It means the world to me to have the best coach in the country have that much trust and that much confidence in you,” Braswell said during the season. “I’ve worked tirelessly with the coaching staff to make sure the improvements are where they need to be and it started to come to fruition during the fall. Obviously I still have a ways to go, but I’d say it’s been a great process.”
Braswell ended the year with a .311 average with 12 doubles and three triples and 36 RBIs in 212 at-bats. The improvements were huge as the Tigers made a run to the postseason in the final stages of the year.
Johnson knew he had the patience and savvy at the plate, but it became more about the mechanics and tapping into his base at 6-foot-2 to further unlock his potential.
“It was really about hitting development,” Braswell said. “Coach Johnson told me ‘we think you have the base pieces to be a really good hitter and with our development we can take you to the next level.’ I put my trust in him to get me better and it’s worked so far.”
Johnson continued to rave about Braswell’s maturity and playmaking ability replacing an MLB talent in Jordan Thompson at shortstop. Now, with him back, LSU has a veteran presence in the lineup that will help blend together the youth, the transfers, and the returners, as LSU hopes to get back to Omaha and back to the top of the mountain in 2025.
“It’s hard to imagine our team this year without him,” Johnson said in January. “He’s done a great job defensively – he’s even better than I thought. Thankfully he chose to come here and it’s mutually beneficial. He’s put in a lot of work with coach Wanaka and he has a really good idea of what he’s doing right now [at the plate].”
In his two years at South Carolina, Braswell batted sub-.290 at the plate, but found that consistency in his first season at with the Tigers. Getting him back, with the addition of transfer portal bats like Edwin Yamin from Dayton, Dalton Beck from Incarnate Word, and Daniel Dickinson from Utah Valley, LSU is continuing to stack up high-level offensive talent to get the lineup Johnson wants heading into a pivotal year four at the helm of the LSU program.
