Mizzou Baseball Reflects on Tumultuous Season

With their 2025 campaign, Missouri Tigers baseball etched their name in the record books. It was not in a way that any team would want to, however.

The Tigers concluded their season with a .291 win percentage and the least Southeastern Conference wins by any team in the modern era. Until Missouri was able to get a sweep on the road against Texas A&M in their pennultimate seriess, it appeared as if they would finish winless in conference play.

The good news about the conclusion of the 2025 season is that head coach Kerrick Jackson and his crew are able to turn the page and put their performance behind them. They are able to work toward the future of the program and improving the team.

Immaturity Holding Them Back

On countless occasions, the Tigers found themselves in positions where they could potentially take the lead or get the win, but it seemed as if they always found a way to lose. Their second-year head coach boiled that down to one thing.

"We are an immature baseball club," Jackson said following their Game 1 loss to Alabama in the SEC Tournament. "I don't mean that disrespectfully, it's just the reality of what it is, and that showed itself today, where there were some opportunities that we had to put ourselves in a position to win the ball game, and we just weren't able to come up with the right hit or make the right play at the right time."

The Tigers didn't seem to struggle with getting runners on during the season, but actually getting them home. In their 4-1 loss to Alabama in the SEC Tournament, Mizzou stranded nine runners in the final four innings.

"Obviously not the way we wanted our year to go in totality," Jackson said. "I think today's game just kind of showed who we were all year."

Due to injuries and things just not working, Jackson found himself moving players around frequently and giving a lot of freshman chances to show what they could do. Jackson has expressed not being afraid to throw his players into the fire and force them to mature quickly, occasionally out of need. Sometimes, it worked out.

One example was with freshman Chris Patterson, who found himself at third after injuries to multiple infielders. He excelled in his appearances and forced his way into being an everyday starter. Patterson finished his freshman campaign with 30 starts and a .232 batting average.

"It's just developing," Jackson said. "It's just these guys playing more baseball and learning the game more and as they do that, they're going to be really good players."

In the Middle of a Rebuild

Out of that immaturity could come growth. This stage is required for rebuilding a program.

"I've been through a rebuild before, so I know what it looks like and I know it's not pretty," Jackson said. "Some of these guys in our locker room, they've never experienced any type of adversity ever. And so this is the first time they've experienced it."

The program has faced increased scrutiny and has been under fire at times due to their poor performance on the field. Back-to-back lackluster seasons under the helm of Jackson has led to questions about his ability to lead.

"When you're on this stage, and in this league, and everything is so visible with social media, and you've got all the negative experience and the doubt about what's going on," Jackson said, "that can weigh on these kids a little bit."

Despite the increased attention, Jackson has found himself convinced that he will turn this program around. Missouri Athletic Director Laird Veatch has shown support for his baseball coach and asked for patience from the outside while they try to accomplish this rebuild.

"What I like about adversity is that it becomes great if you learn from it and move forward from it," Jackson said. "We're the biggest story for how bad we are this year, but I promise you, we'll be the biggest story for how good we're going to be next year."

A Reflection of the Future

There were moments that Mizzou was able to get all their pieces together and serve as real competition to it's opponents. Due to the injuries to the pitching staff, these games were few in number.

The Tigers dealt with over half of their pitching staff facing an injury at some point in the season. This forced them to have to find a new weekend rotation and push pitchers into roles they weren't familiar with. This lead to Mizzou dropping a lot of games with crooked scores.

Early in the season, the team was averaging nearly double digit runs a game, but were still losing because of their depleted arms. Once they hit conference play, they were not able to score nearly as many runs as consistently.

As the season wound down, the Tigers saw many of their arms return from injury and have flashes of success from the mound. Were they to have these arms all season and be able to pair it with the offense from the beginning of the season, it is more likely that the year goes very differently.

Inconsistency remained a constant string throughout the rebuild and the team. Mizzou would have really successful games, such as the Texas A&M series and then follow it with an embarrassing performance, as seen in the Mississippi State sweep.

"There were moments and times when things really, really clicked for them and they understood," Jackson said. "Then there were still some moments where they fell back into not being able to understand."

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