After 15 seasons at LSU head baseball coach Paul Mainieri announces retirement

BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) - After 39 seasons and the last 15 with the LSU Tigers, head coach Paul Mainieri has announced his retirement, a press conference has been scheduled for Friday, May 28 at 4:30 p.m.

“I have been the luckiest guy in the world to have lived out a childhood dream of becoming a college baseball coach,” Mainieri said. “I’ve worked at four wonderful institutions, and it’s been the honor of my life to have served as the head coach at LSU for 15 years. To have carried the torch of a program built by Skip Bertman, the greatest college baseball coach of all time, has been a tremendous privilege. It has always been my unwavering goal to sustain the excellence that was created here.

The Hall of Fame coach has led the Tigers program since 2007 and during his time at LSU Mainieri won a National Championship in 2009 and was the National Runner-Up in 2017. Mainieri recently won his 1,500th career win on Friday, May 21 against Texas A&M.

He finishes his career at LSU with a record of 637-282-3 (.693) the third highest winning percentage in Southeastern Conference history trailing only former LSU coach Skip Bertman, who was 870-330-3 (.724) from 1984-2001, and former South Carolina coach Ray Tanner, who posted a 738-316 (.700) mark from 1997-2012.

Mainieri is a four-time National Coach of the Year (2000, 2008, 2009, and 2015) and a two-time Southeastern Conference Coach of the Year (2009 and 2015).

He also became the fifth Division I coach in history to notch 1,500 wins and win a National Title. Mainieri is currently the active leader in career wins with 1,501 and No. 9 in all-time NCAA wins.

While at LSU he guided the Tigers to five College World Series Appearances, has won five Super Regional Championships, along with nine National Seeds in the NCAA Tournament. He also won six SEC Tournament Titles to go along with four SEC regular season titles as well.

During Mainieri’s tenure at LSU there have been 88 players selected in the Major League Baseball Draft, including a first-round pick in seven of the past 12 seasons, outfielder Jared Mitchell in 2009, pitcher Anthony Ranaudo in 2010, outfielder Mikie Mahtook in 2011, pitcher Kevin Gausman in 2012, pitcher Aaron Nola in 2014, shortstop Alex Bregman in 2015 and pitcher Alex Lange in 2017.

Three former LSU Tigers have gone on to win a World Series, Louis Coleman in 2015 with the Kansas City Royals, Alex Bregman with the Houston Astros in 2017, and Andrew Stevenson with the Washington Nationals in 2019.

20 former LSU Tigers who played under Mainieri have reached the MLB.

Governor John Bel Edwards posted to the following statement to Twitter about Mainieri’s announcement:

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