BATON ROUGE, LA - JUNE 8: Jake Brown #7 of the LSU Tigers in action against the West Virginia Mountaineers during the NCAA Baton Rouge Super Regional on June 8, 2025 at Alex Box Stadium in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. (Photo by Alex Diaz/LSU/University Images via Getty Images) It’s been a brutal 24 hours or so for Jay Johnson and the 2026 LSU baseball team.If the product on the field wasn’t bad enough, somehow things have gotten even worse off of it, and at this point I think LSU’s title defense is now entering “season from hell territory.” Last night on his radio show, Jay Johnson confirmed that starting pitcher Cooper Moore would miss the rest of the regular season.Moore last pitched against Oklahoma a month ago, but exited that outing after four innings after what was initially believed to be tricep tightness in his right arm. A second medical opinion, however, revealed the Moore has a stress fracture in his right elbow and it will require surgery.
LSU was hoping to have Moore back for this past weekend against Texas A&M. Instead, Moore will need four to five months to recover; if there is a silver lining for LSU it’s that Moore will receive a medical redshirt for this season, and he intends to return to LSU in 2027. Even better for Moore is that he will still be considered a junior for 2027, and thus retain his leverage ahead of the 2027 MLB Draft.“The thought was that he could throw through it,” Johnson said on his radio show Monday.
“But what this (surgery) does is it allows him to medical redshirt and allow him to still be a junior next year.”While one could maybe look at the glass half full with Moore, there’s no sugarcoating LSU’s other bit of news: Jake Brown’s season is most likely over.Johnson confirmed the news to The Advocate on Tuesday. Brown broke his hamate bone in his right wrist. According to Johnson, the injury happened in Brown’s third at bat of Sunday’s game against Texas A&M.“He actually hit a ball good down the left-field line, and then that’s when I saw him kind of shake his hand,” Johnson said.
“I was like, ‘I hope that’s not what I think it is,’ is what went through my mind. My guess is he’s having surgery quickly, and he’ll do everything in his power to get healthy as fast as he can.”Brown has been LSU’s best player by far in 2026 with a team-leading 16 homers, 49 RBI, and 1.064 OPS. After splitting time in right field last season, Brown had started all 41 games of LSU’s season.LSU fans know a thing or two about a broken hamate bone.
Warren Morris hit the most famous home run in the history of the College World Series after getting surgery on his wrist in 1996, and last summer Daniel Dickinson played through a break and didn’t get surgery until after LSU won the national title. They say lightning strikes twice, but I’m not so sure it will strike a third time for LSU.If this is indeed it for Jake Brown, he’ll leave LSU as a career. 304 hitter across 161 games and 108 starts. He was LSU’s leading hitter in Omaha with a .385 average (5-13) and got the Tigers on the board with a two-run single in the sixth inning of the NCAA Tournament semifinal game against Arkansas. Brown’s made himself a good bit of money this season, and is currently viewed as the No. 56 overall prospect on MLB.com ahead of this July’s draft.