How lifelong Washington Huskies fan has revived the baseball program

Eddie Smith has always loved the purple and gold. 

Decades before he was hired for his dream job as UW baseball coach last July, the Olympia native was a passionate Huskies fan. 

Smith was in early elementary school when the Don James-led football team went to the Rose Bowl and won the national title. There’s a photo of him in UW gear when he was around 3 years old. There is even a video showcasing his passionate interest in the Dawgs in the immediate aftermath of his daughter’s birth on Nov. 4, 2022. 

“I’m sitting there in the hospital room and my wife is sound asleep after giving birth to our firstborn, and this little girl is hours old,” Smith said. “ … Then I pan over to the hospital TV, and I’m watching the Huskies football team play Oregon State on a Friday night game.

“No matter where I’ve been, I’ve definitely always been following Husky athletics, especially baseball, just because I’m in the game.”

Now, the lifelong Husky fanatic is helping to revive Washington on the baseball diamond. In his first season at the helm, Washington has improved from last year’s 19-31-1 record to a 27-22 mark so far with a 15-9 record in conference play, good for fifth place in the 17-team Big Ten.

This bounce-back year for UW comes despite a rough 3-8 start, a roster with 22 newcomers compared to 20 returners, and an offseason that saw several of the team’s top players from 2024 enter the transfer portal. 

Infielder Aiva Arquette went to Oregon State, while standout reliever Grant Cunningham followed former head coach Jason Kelly to Texas A&M, and with zero dollars of NIL money to offer, the Huskies stood little chance of retaining them. 

“We were out there trying to beg them to return on goodwill with no real preexisting relationship,” Smith said. “So that was an interesting scenario for sure.”

The Huskies managed to keep players such as senior outfielder AJ Guerrero and junior reliever Isaac Yeager, while adding key pieces in the portal like Casen Taggart from Washington State, and speedy center fielder Malakhi Knight from UCLA. 

On the pitching side, the Huskies landed their top two starters from the portal in Max Banks and Jackson Thomas, from Utah Valley and Chapman University, respectively. 

Those two have led the way on the Huskies’ sterling pitching staff, which has been its biggest key to success. Banks, UW’s Friday night starter, has a 3.49 ERA and 1.13 WHIP with 52 strikeouts in 56⅔ innings so far, while Thomas has a 3.92 ERA in 57⅓ innings. 

Other arms such as Yeager and Josh Emanuels have provided solid innings as well on a staff that is tied for fifth in the Big Ten with a 4.95 ERA and sixth with a 1.48 WHIP, while issuing the fifth-fewest walks in the conference. 

“I think on the pitching side, we can compete with anyone,” Banks said. “I have a lot of confidence in our staff, in the starters that follow me and then the relievers that come in after me as well. I have no problem with handing the ball off to the guys in our bullpen.”

Smith gives full credit for the staff’s success to pitching coach Connor Lambert, a childhood friend he hired from the University of Portland, and who he considers “the best pitching coach in the country,” and “a hitting coach’s nightmare.”

“I stay out of his way. That’s my number one priority, because he is so good,” Smith said. “But what I recognize about him is what I’ve seen out of the best coaches I’ve ever been around, and that he has a clearly defined standard that he never wavers from, and he demands it out of every player every day. … He demands excellence.”

Smith is known for his success developing pro-worthy hitters, which he demonstrated by reviving the offense at his previous head coaching stop at Utah Valley, and his time as the hitting coach at LSU. 

Under his tutelage, the Huskies’ bats have made a big jump. 

Last season, the Huskies hit .248 as a team with a .731 OPS and a .392 slugging percentage with 56 homers. UW has raised all of those numbers significantly in 2025, with a .272 team average, a collective .808 OPS and a .424 slugging mark. Taggart is hitting .348 with a 1.022 OPS, while Guerrero has a team-high eight homers and 35 RBI. 

Guerrero has played for three head coaches, starting his freshman year under Lindsay Meggs, and likes Smith’s hands-off coaching style, and emphasis on hitting the ball to the middle of the field.

“It’s not really him going in and changing mechanics or anything,” Guerrero said. “If he sees something that’s really wrong, it’s more just you’ve got to be able to understand and be able to coach yourself, because you’re the one who knows yourself the best.”

While he has helped turn the program around, Smith’s first year hasn’t always been a smooth ride. Injuries decimated the lineup early on, and the Huskies went 4-12 in one 16-game stretch where Taggart, Guerrero or Knight were out of the lineup. 

The Huskies are 23-10 outside of that injury-plagued stretch and finished off a series victory over conference-leading Iowa last weekend, and scored 11 or more runs in four of their previous five games before that series.

“I think any team’s best when they have all their players. But specifically for us, it just helps, because we know that we’ll have each other’s backs,” Taggart said. “If one of us doesn’t perform, we’ll pick each other up. So being able to fire on all cylinders is definitely a huge advantage.”

The Huskies will finish off their regular season with series against Oregon, starting Friday, and USC, both ranked in the Top 25. If his team continues to roll, Smith is hopeful that the first year of his dream job will end with the Huskies in the NCAA tournament for just the second time since 2018. 

“When we are healthy, we have played really, really good baseball, and beyond the bubble of regional caliber baseball,” Smith said. “Like, no doubt at large bid baseball. I think if we finish strong here, we have a case to be made for that, and hopefully people will listen.”