Michigan baseball coach Tracy Smith excited about 'realistic chance' to win national title

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Michigan Wolverines baseball wasn’t able to hold on to head coach Erik Bakich, who departed for Clemson this summer after 10 seasons in Ann Arbor. Bakich took U-M to five NCAA Tournaments and famously led it to the 2019 College World Series Final, where the Wolverines lost to Vanderbilt in a do-or-die Game 3.

Success like that is atypical of a northern team. Despite new leadership at the helm in head man Tracy Smith, the goals aren’t any smaller than what Michigan was shooting for under Bakich.

Smith, 56, is back in the midwest, where he’s spent most of his coaching career, including head-coaching stops at Miami (Ohio) (1997-2005) and Indiana (2006-14) before moving on to Arizona State from 2015-21. He took the Hoosiers to the 2013 College World Series.

The new Michigan coach was perfectly content with being a grandfather and avid Netflix watcher during his time off after being let go by ASU last June. While he wanted to get back into coaching, it had to be the right place. So there he sat in a circle with media members Tuesday afternoon inside a classroom at Ray Fisher Stadium, discussing his new gig.

“We never really wanted to say it when I was at my other school in Hoosier land, but this is a different beast,” Smith said of Michigan. “The national brand, the ability to realistically play for a national championship was very important to me, because if I was going to get out of the grandfather thing, it was going to have to fit on a lot of levels. Everybody talks about winning a national championship, but
I think you have a realistic chance to do that here, by the support that’s given to the program. I think recent history speaks to that.

“On a personal level, just being familiar, no stranger to the midwest, that’s been the fun part to me, is getting back here and that activation of the network and all of the old friends that I had not really kept in contact with over the last eight years from just being in a different spot geographically.”

He went on to describe the Michigan job as “special.”

Smith was announced July 3, which is tough timing considering the transfer portal deadline had passed and some of his roster and recruiting class already departed the program. While he called those things “challenges,” he said he won’t make excuses because of geography, facilities or the like, while acknowledging there are differences between coaching in the North and the South.

Bakich had the Michigan program rolling, but Smith and his staff bring in a new perspective, which could be beneficial.

“It’s a fresh start for everybody, and I’m all about opportunity,” the Michigan coach explained. “To me, the only thing Michigan should and will promise is an opportunity to compete and get better every day. We’ll do our best to develop and everything, but it’s on them.”

Tracy Smith talks Michigan recruiting philosophy

Two Michigan players transferred to the Tigers, and three former U-M commits flipped to Clemson after Bakich took the Tigers’ job, which was frustrating for some fans to see. That’s just the nature of the business, though, Smith said.

“God love it, my friend, Erik Bakich, got us a little bit on the way out,” Smith said with a laugh. “And I joke with him all the time, so there’s no hard feelings on that; it’s just the situation. 

“Kids choose to go to a school and they choose people, so I don’t begrudge any of the kids that have exited the ‘22 [class]. We’ve just now got to fill it up. And I think the experience we have of being in the midwest before and activating that network is going to allow us to make that up pretty quickly.”

Smith said priority after being hired No. 1 was to stabilize the roster, then worry about recruiting

“We want to get in here and assess with we have, because we’ve talked about sustainable success,” Smith continued. “Let’s not make quick decisions and try to fill this thing and not be with what aligns with what we want on the field and the university at large.

“We’re going to take our time. We’re not going to panic. We’re going to get after recruiting — and we have — but the timing of it has been a little problematic, but not something that we can’t overcome in time. And ‘time’ being not a lot of time — within the next year. Stabilizing that, and then just really your typical transition of getting to know your kids and your family and community at large. Taking them one step at a time.