Ohio State’s baseball program has been discussed like a dormant volcano at multiple turns.
An athletics department with the resources that the Buckeyes have coupled with the popularity of baseball as a sport could theoretically be a winning pairing. But it’s been since 1967 that Ohio State went to a College World Series, and the team has won 40 games in a season just once in the past 14 years.
New Buckeye baseball coach Justin Haire is hoping to wake what he sees as a boogeyman up from under the athletics department’s proverbial bed.
“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 at his introductory press conference on Thursday. “Extreme ownership over every single piece of our program. There will be no room to transfer the blame, to make excuses.”
Taking over for Bill Mosiello after the former TCU coach returned there following a brief two-year stint with the Buckeyes, Haire is eager to establish a program tradition that Ohio State fans and team alumni can take pride in.
“We're not here to make results-oriented promises, that's not something that we're going to do,” Haire said. “I can't predict the future. I can't tell you how many championships we're going to win. I can't tell you how many guys we're going to get drafted. But 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.”
Haire comes to Ohio State from Campbell, where he won five Big South conference championships, including three consecutive in 2022, 2023 and 2024. He won seven NCAA tournament games while there, more than the Buckeyes have won in their last 14 combined years under Mosiello and former head coach Greg Beals. His career record was 317-212 with the Camels.
A native Ohioan, Haire played collegiately at Bowling Green and Indianapolis before starting his coaching career as an assistant at Sterling College in Kansas in 2004. After getting the shock to the system that was Mosiello’s resignation, getting someone with Ohio ties more likely to stay with the program long-term was part of the draw to Haire for Ohio State athletic director Ross Bjork. He’d just overseen the hiring of softball coach Kirin Kumar – who also met the public for the first time on Wednesday – and felt Haire had the right people-first mindset.
“When we set the profile for all of this, I didn’t know that I’d have a profile for softball that I’d engage with in the middle of May, then I would turn around and use that same profile in June when we hired Justin to be our baseball coach,” Bjork said. “What I believe is that everything is connected through the people. I’ve learned that. The 'Win with People' mantra is so true.”
It didn’t take long into his first Zoom call with Haire for Bjork to know it was the right fit.
“Within a matter of probably a few minutes, ‘OK, this can work,’” Bjork said. “We see it. We see the charisma. We see the connection. ... Somebody who wants to be here, that’s important. Somebody who wants to be a Buckeye. So that added bonus with Justin really hit home with us as well.”
While both Bjork and Haire feel the resources are there to achieve great things at Ohio State, there are challenges that come with baseball in Ohio.
The collegiate game isn’t as popular in the Midwest as it is in the South. Southern teams also have the advantage of weather which allows them to play year-round, and for a sport that is so fundamentally skill-based, those advantages are gargantuan when it comes to producing prospects.
“We’re in a geographic area that is not the easiest for baseball and softball. We understand that,” Bjork said. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t what that equation is. I’ve seen other equations, and I know what that looks like. But somebody who can really embrace maybe some obstacles but also see that as opportunities. Somebody that understood Ohio.”
Still, Bjork and Haire also expressed dismay that some of the Buckeye State’s top high school prospects have signed elsewhere in recent years. That’s part of why reestablishing the program’s culture – he noted it’s the oldest athletic team at Ohio State, first organized in 1881 – is so important.
“We certainly want to do a good job in-state and make sure that the guys that maybe have gone elsewhere and are wanting to come back home, that we do a good job of finding the right ones and the right fits and try to build our program from that,” Haire said.
That said, recruiting players to Ohio State won’t be any different from recruiting players to Campbell, Haire noted. Family is a foundational element for Haire in his personal life and in his program building, so talent acquisition will all be based around relationships.
“I think the pitch is the same,” Haire said. “I mean, we are who we are. We're going to develop the heck out of our guys. We're going to love the heck out of our guys. And you know, the biggest thing about being at Ohio State is people answer your phone call and they call you back maybe a little bit more. But again, I think it's important to have the right people in the room.”
There are core tenets and principles one can find when it comes to building winning organizations. Countless books have been written on the subject.
But for Haire, it’s essential that Ohio State’s identity under his leadership is “unique.” It needs to stand alone in the way it functions, in the familial atmosphere he wants to establish, in its approach to recruiting.
“I think the biggest part for us is that we've got to know who we are, but we also have to know who we're not,” Haire said. “And we've got to figure out what our niche is from a recruiting standpoint, from a development standpoint, what that looks like with scheduling, what that looks like with how we travel, what that looks like with how we run practice or facility upgrades. We don't need to copy anyone else. We need to be the best version of who we are.”
“We don't need to copy anyone else. We need to be the best version of who we are.”– Justin Haire
By forging that identity, Haire can begin to grow the program into the monster he believes it can be.
