LSU Baseball Hires Twins Pitching Coach Wes Johnson, per Report

He’ll leave the organization after four years to return to the SEC.

In a rare midseason move, Twins pitching coach Wes Johnson will leave the first-place AL Central organization to become the new pitching coach at LSU, as first reported by Kendall Rogers of D1Baseball.com.

BREAKING: @LSUbaseball is hiring @Twins pitching coach Wes Johnson as its new pitching coach, sources tell @d1baseball. Johnson has spent the last four seasons with the #Twins and marks a blockbuster hire for Jay Johnson. #LSU https://t.co/iXDPdKS6pm pic.twitter.com/OVkWIrQgXS

— Kendall Rogers (@KendallRogers) June 26, 2022

Johnson has spent the last four years in Minnesota after first joining the franchise in 2019. In his first two seasons with the team, he helped lead one of the league’s most consistent staff and the Twins won the AL Central in both ’19 and ’20. 

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After Minnesota’s rotation ranked in the bottom five of the league in ERA in ’21, Johnson had started to put the group back on track this season. The Twins (41–33) currently rank 11th in MLB in team ERA (3.78) and 14th in opposing batting average (.239) as the midway point of the season approaches. 

Now on his way out of Minnesota, Johnson will return to the SEC after previously serving as the pitching coach at Mississippi State in 2016 and Arkansas from 2017–18. He will replace Jason Kelly at LSU, who left earlier this month to take over as the head coach at Washington. 

The Tigers went 40–22 this past season and lost in the Hattiesburg Regional of the NCAA Tournament to host school Southern Miss.

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