Ohio State’s new baseball coach Justin Haire was introduced along with Kirin Kumar, the new head softball coach for the Buckeyes on Wednesday, and spoke about how intends to build Ohio State’s program up from where it stands now.
After the Buckeyes best pitcher and hitter both transferred away in Landon Beidelschies (Arkansas) and Henry Kaczmar (South Carolina), respectively, Ohio State still has a ways to go to making the NCAA tournament again even though Bill Mosiello was able to take them to th Big Ten Tournament for the first time since 2019 this season. However, Haire didn’t promise any successes, only hard work to try to make that success happen.
“We’re not here to make results oriented promises,” Haire said. “I can’t predict the future. I can’t tell you how many championships we’re going to win and I can’t tell you how many guys we’re going to get drafted. What I can tell you is that we’re going to have the right people in place, we’re going to work incredibly hard to create the right process and we’re going to make sure that the product that we put on the field is something that everybody can be proud of.
“What can you expect from me and from our staff? Enthusiasm for the process of building this program into the monster we know it can be,” Haire said. “Extreme ownership over every single piece of our program. There will be no room to transfer the blame, to make excuses.”
One way Haire believes that can happen is embracing the tradition of Ohio State baseball and bringing back players who have gone through the school and know what it’s like to play baseball for the Buckeyes.
“It is time for our alumni to come home. It is time for our alumni to come together,” Haire said. “And we’re going to need each and every one of those guys and staff members, managers and people that have had a hand in this program to come back to campus to reinvest and help us build this place to new heights on the national stage.”
When it comes to recruiting for baseball at Ohio State, it can be tougher since the season begins in the colder months of the year, so better prospects tend to end up going south. In this year’s College World Series, four of the teams were from the SEC and four from the ACC, showing the dominance that the two conferences have been able to boast in the sport.
However, Haire said he won’t be taking any approaches from anyone else, and will be making sure that Ohio State can get back to repeatable success in baseball by accepting those challenges and fighting through them.
“The identity of our program will be uniquely ours,” he said. “It won’t be some version of someone else’s program and it won’t be some rip off version of anything else. It will be our identity and it will be the absolute best version of Buckeye baseball.”
