Opening Day is just a few days away and Clemson head baseball coach Erik Bakich is anxious to get the 2025 campaign underway.
The No. 15 Tigers begin the season by playing in the Shriners Children’s College Showdown in Arlington, Texas. Clemson opens against No. 17 Oklahoma State on Friday, then will play No. 21 Arizona on Saturday, before finishing up with Ole Miss on Sunday.
The opening weekend will be a tough test for a team that has to replace more than 70 home runs from last year’s squad that made it to the Super Regional round of the NCAA Tournament.
However, across Bakich’s first two seasons at Clemson, the head coach has excelled as it pertains to replacing production lost from some of his star players.
“When you lose superstar players — Caden Grice, Cooper Ingle, you got to reload the next year,” Bakich told The Clemson Insider. “Then you lose superstar players like Blake Wright, Tristan Smith, Jimmy Obertop, all these players we lost. Will (Taylor), Jacob Hinerlieder, Alden Mathes, all these great contributors, you just got to reload.”
Bakich did a masterful job in navigating the transfer portal during the offseason. Clemson added a couple of big bats to the lineup that should help offset some of the lost production.
One of those additions is Luke Gaffney, the Big 10 Freshman of the Year a season ago at Purdue. He hit a team-high .359 with 13 home runs and 64 RBI.
The Tigers also nabbed Collin Priest from Michigan. The left-handed hitter earned second-team freshman All-American honors after hitting .279 with 11 home runs and 30 RBI. He also added 11 doubles and 34 walks.
Graduate transfer Dominic Listi was also signed after hitting .324 with 14 doubles, 57 runs, 34 walks, and 25 hit-by-pitches last year at Indiana State.
“The identity of each team is discovered along the way,” Bakich added. “As you get knocked down and get back up, you find out what you are all about. A lot of times, that journey and that discovery process of what the true identity is and the character traits are as a team — that’s where the magic is.”
While adding transfers to an already established culture can be tricky, it’s now that the true test begins, and Bakich is more than ready to see how his team responds once the real games begin.
“On paper, we look great,” Bakich said. “Intrasquading, everybody is happy. All of our classroom sessions, it’s unbelievable. We will see when the garbage starts to hit the fan, roles start to be identified, playing time gets cut in half and we get punched in the mouth. We will see how we respond. That will determine the identity of this group over the next six months.”