2025’s 13-37 record was tough to coach and tough to endure, for everyone. Now second-year coach Justin Haire sets out to rework the culture of Buckeyes baseball in 2026. (Press Pros Feature Photos)
Eight months after their worst season in fifty years, Justin Haire’s Ohio State baseball team seeks to reset – fix – some issues that led to its worst record since 1972. How much can they do? We’d all like to know.
Columbus, OH – Their record from a year ago looms big – bigger than normal – as the Ohio State baseball Buckeyes prepare to open their 2026 campaign in two weeks.
13 wins and 37 losses was shocking.
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1 road win against 17 road losses was unbelievable to alumni and program followers, alike.
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And 5 and 25 in Big Ten play was simply more than some will even discuss…including the 23-1 drubbing by Michigan on a Saturday in May.
What went wrong?
Well baseball-wise you can’t win if you can’t pitch. And in a word, the 2025 Buckeyes didn’t – allowing 447 earned runs, walking 352 batters, hitting 94 others, and issuing 88 wild pitches. And they did all that in a matter of 50 games and 418 innings, six fewer than the normal 56-game schedule.
And even with adequate pitching you need at least adequate defense. And the Buckeyes weren’t particularly settled in that department, either.
They hit .264 as a team. But opposing teams hit 36 points higher against them.
Some pointed a finger at stability with the lineup, and yes, there were injuries – lots of them.
There’s no denying that #1 starting pitcher Landon Beidelschies’ departure via the portal was a numbing loss for the Buckeyes in 2025.
And last, they lost a lot of experience at key positions through the transfer portal – a #1 starting pitching, starting shortstop, starting centerfielder, and two valuable freshman pitching arms from 2024.
It was, to use the phrase, the perfect storm of what could go wrong.
But flush it. Hope springs eternal, and with that Justin Haire and his staff said goodbye to about half the roster at season’s end.
“We obviously weren’t talented enough,” was the post-season consensus.
And to flip the script in 2026 he brought in 24 new talents from the transfer portal and freshman recruitment, hoping to send a message to friends and foes, alike. They’re not standing still.
Not standing still, indeed, and so much to write about that one column cannot address it all.
In fact, the roster, itself, is only a piece of the facelift that comes with 2026 season. New box seats have been installed at Bill Davis Stadium, along with a new scoreboard. Just in case!
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And what does Haire know now…that he didn’t know then, or even at the end of fall baseball?
Pitching is where he chose to begin last week.
“That’s a good question,” he said in a sitdown interview. “I don’t know if any lingering question marks have been smoothed out from the fall. It’s hard to predict how much better we’ll be because we’ve only been outside twice since we’ve been back in school. But I know this. This group likes to work, and our foundational pieces, and foundational pieces on the mound, are in a better spot. “We have more guys (pitchers) that are going to contribute in a meaningful way – that we can count on – to give us a chance to win. That said, we won’t have to rely on the same arms every day to get us to the sixth inning one day, then come back the next to protect a lead at the end of the game. We talk about raising the floor as a pitching staff from year one to year two, and that’s a huge piece. I don’t think we’re going to have to use our better guys in every situation.”
Sophomore Gavin Kuzniewski showed all the tangibles to be a dependable Big Ten starter in 2026.
“We have more guys (pitchers) that are going to contribute, that we can count on to give us a chance to win.”
Reality and baseball are inseparable. And one of Haire’s realities will be his dependence on many of the same arms he relied on in 2025…a significant aspect of the floor being raised in 2026.
He’ll hope that sophomore Gavin Kuzniewski can improve from 3-5 and 6.75 in 56 innings, with 37 walks and 43 strikeouts. And Kuzniewski, who surprised last year with his competitive resiliency, gave every indication that he can take the next step in 2026.
Jake Michalak, the hard-throwing great unknown, is also back for his junior season, hoping to harness the best fastball on the staff into a serviceable outs producer. His floor in 2025 was a wild one, with 58 walks and 16 batters hit by a pitch in 46.2 innings. Yet, no one in the Big Ten showed a fastball with more hair on it…if he can throw it for strikes.
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Sahil Patel, the junior lefthander, showed at times last year everything you need to be a dependable innings eater in the Big Ten – the good fastball and a knee-bending curve. But again, the consistency that amounted to a 9.38 ERA in 38 innings with 42 walks, 40 strikeouts and 7 hit batters.
Ryan Butler, the experienced transfer from Liberty University, is back from injury, but with a history of injuries.
Hunter Shaw, perhaps the most dependable strike thrower on the roster in 2025, returns to improve on a 3-5 record and a 6.09 ERA. More, he struck out 35 in 44 innings, and walked just 13.
Andrew Edrington, out of Cincinnati, is another returning candidate hampered by injuries in 2025. His pedigree out of Princeton High School has always been positive, if he’s sound.
Texan Doug Bauer threw hard and improved steadily throughout the 2025 season. He’s one of the ‘pieces’ in 2026.
Doug Bauer, the hard-thrower from Texas, is back to improve on a 3-1 record and a 6.69 ERA. And like Shaw, he struck out twice the number he walked during his best moments.
And Luke Carrell, a transfer from Oklahoma last year, returns to focus on whatever’s needed, from spot starter to short specialist against left-handed hitters.
Two weeks from opening pitch in Pensacola, there’s no hard decision on a weekend starting rotation.
“When we’re up four or five runs, we’re gonna’ have a number of guys we can go to, instead of two guys,” says Haire. “We’re aiming on using our high-end guys in tighter situations. All of those guys (afore-mentioned) showed signs last year that they could continue to develop. We feel like they had the right stuff, but we needed to surround them with some other people. Again, our floor was really low, almost under water. If we had to go to the #10, #11, or #12 man on our staff it was not going to be good. This year if we’re up comfortably we want to go to the #12 guy in the seventh and hope that he can finish the game for us. We don’t want that situation where we have to use two additional guys and hope that we can finish. That’s where we were last year, and that was not fun.
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“We feel like we have some additional guys we can use for matchups…guys that can come in and get you an out, and out of a situation. They may only have ten innings, but they’ll have fifteen appearances. We couldn’t do that last year. We need those people that can come in and get us one to three outs, not one to three innings because we’re out of options. That’s never a good recipe.”
Justin Haire is a smart cookie. A realist with a winning experience, he was patient in 2025 to let people play themselves in, or out, of the conversation come 2026.
Undeterred by 13-37…Justin Haire in his second year is optimistic about raising the competitive floor of Ohio State baseball. “The game will answer the questions,” he says.
He knows that all of the above is subject to being proven, and until it does the search goes on. That’s baseball.
“The game will give you the answers to the questions,” he likes to say. And the search includes a pair of prized incoming freshmen who gave a good account of themselves in fall baseball.
Jude Fisher and Owen Graf, both Ohio recruits, give developmental hope for the future – Fisher out of Cleveland and the Pro 5 Baseball Academy, and Graf, from Anthony Wayne High School in Toledo, where he pitched that team to the Division II state title last year in OHSAA baseball.
“Both are good arms, and we haven’t even seen the best of Owen Graf because he pitched all spring and summer before he showed up on campus, probably a hundred innings,” adds Haire. “I knew we were going to see a muted version of him. But he’s come back in winter workouts to be really good. He and Jude Fisher will be two good arms to build around in the near future. And both should have a chance to help us a significant amount this spring.”
13 and 37 tells you this…that all the above is the starting line for improvement in 2026, with a conference that now includes UCLA, USC, and Oregon in addition to all the old heavies. And the insidious cross-country travel adds further challenge.
And still to consider is the issue of offense, and improved defense. And with the season opening in two weeks there’s no time for introductions to a roster full of new names with no resume’ of previous success against Michigan, Iowa, and Indiana.
It’s a different era of Buckeyes baseball, the only known reality for ’26 being new seats and a new scoreboard. Beyond that, it’s like the man says.
The game will give you the answers to the questions!
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