REPORT: Steve Rodriguez Steps Down as Baylor Baseball Coach

WACO, Texas – The Steve Rodriguez Era at Baylor is reportedly over, per Kendall Rodgers of D1 Baseball.

After an unimpressive 26-28 record in 2022, Rodriguez and Baylor will be parting ways after his seventh season as head coach. The change comes as the program looked to be trending in the wrong direction, or looking a bit listless at the very least.

During his tenure, Rodriguez compiled a 197-146 overall record while going 67-75 in Big 12 play. After being hired in 2016 to replace Steve Smith, the Bears made the postseason in three consecutive years, 2017, 2018, and 2019 and won the conference tournament in 2018. 

It’s widely recognized that Rodriguez has had to endure substantial hardships during his tenure at Baylor that some may dub “unlucky.” Injuries to significant players in 2018 and 2019 derailed the tail ends of both seasons. 

The Bears were coming off of three consecutive victories over SEC teams in the Shriners Classic before Covid put an end to the 2020 season. 

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Covid affected the team in the final stretch of the 2021 season as well. The struggles towards the end of the year, in part due to not having a full roster at times, resulted in Baylor being the 65th out of 64 teams to make the NCAA tournament. It was another tough break in a seven-year stretch full of tough circumstances. Yet when situations like those repeatedly happen, it begins to warrant questions of whether it is really luck or lack thereof. 

In February of 2022, the Bears anticipated a return to the post-season fueled by the frustrations of just barely missing out on an NCAA Tournament bid the year prior. Despite a rough start to the year, the Bears still had plenty of opportunities to turn their season around. But some untimely injuries to Tyler Thomas and Will Rigney derailed any chance of a late-season run.

Coach Rodriguez had proven in the past he was capable of leading the Baylor baseball program to the post-season. But he never got over the hump of advancing to a Super Regional, and in recent years, not making the post-season in two straight seasons has taken the momentum out of the program. Baylor is now looking like the sixth-best baseball program in Texas behind TCU, Texas Tech, Texas A&M, Texas, and Dallas Baptist. 

Baylor has confirmed the report. Mack Rhoades and company will immediately begin a search for a new coach to take over the baseball program for the 2023 season. With Rhoades's history of hiring coaches such as David Aranda and Nicki Collen, the program should be in good hands moving forward.