One look at the LSU baseball roster will reveal incredible depth.
LSU’s opening day lineup featured a trio of defending national champions in the outfield, including a projected top pick in the MLB Draft.
On the infield were more riches: a preseason top-10 infielder, a stalwart of the LSU middle infield, an incoming transfer that led his old program in home runs and another that powered his team to the College World Series in 2025.
Seventeen Tigers placed on Baseball America’s top 100 players by class lists at the start of the season. Breaking through and finding a spot in a lineup requires something special.
Seth Dardar produced just that.
“It’s like Christmas morning,” Dardar said in a preseason press conference. “I wake up, and my present is that I get to have a few at-bats in Alex Box Stadium playing for LSU.”
The senior infielder put on several hats before coming to LSU ahead of the 2026 season. He balanced playing baseball with earning an engineering degree at Columbia University for several seasons before heading to a different Manhattan, transferring to Kansas State in 2025.
A solid season with the Wildcats had Dardar swing to an OPS north of 1.000, guiding them to an NCAA Tournament berth. When he entered the transfer portal ahead of his senior year, he said it took him all of one hour to make his decision to come home.
“When I was going into the portal, I knew I wanted to come here,” Dardar said. “I wanted to come home and be close to family and come to LSU.”
Dardar is a native of Covington, Louisiana, and attended Holy Cross High School. He grew up watching LSU play at Alex Box Stadium and said he was there for the 2023 Baton Rouge Super Regional just after wrapping up his season at Columbia.
“It was kind of LSU or nothing,” Dardar said. “I knew if LSU didn’t recruit me, I was probably going to be hanging up the cleats.”
A strong offseason from his peers in the infield meant that Dardar would be left out of this year’s opening day lineup. The jobs at second and third base would go to Brayden Simpson and Trent Caraway, respectively.
Though he failed to crack the starting nine in the Tigers’ first game of the season, Dardar was presented with an opportunity to make an impact.
Trailing 5-2 against Milwaukee, he got called on to pinch hit for Simpson in the sixth inning. Dardar delivered, clubbing a two-run home run to put the Tigers right back in the ballgame. The next inning, LSU took the lead, and Dardar collected another extra-base hit and RBI.
“I don’t think I could have dreamed it up as good as that,” Dardar said after the game. “That was like, I’ve been dreaming of this moment.”
At the time, head coach Jay Johnson believed that moment to be the start of something bigger for Dardar.
“I think it’s a sign of good things to come, I really do,” Johnson said.
That prediction would be proved correct later that weekend. Pinch hitting once again, Dardar belted a three-run home run to cap off an eight-run fourth inning during a rout against Milwaukee. During LSU’s win against Kent State, he failed to get on base just once across five plate appearances in his second start of the season.
He hasn’t left the starting lineup since. The step forward, in his words, can be attributed to the three letters adorning the front of his jersey.
“I think it’s the name across my chest,” Dardar said. “I’m not just playing for myself. It’s more for LSU.”
Johnson has praised Dardar’s progression towards becoming a better all-around player, saying that Dardar’s defense has improved tremendously, which is a major part of his value.
“He’s an old player, but he’s gotten better since he’s gotten here,” Johnson said. “That’s a credit to the work he’s put in.”
A second baseman in college himself, Johnson has worked with Dardar to improve his game at the position.
“If I do something good, he’ll be like, ‘You look like a young coach Johnson there,’ so I think that’s the best compliment I can get from him,” Dardar said.
For him, the work he’s put in is a part of his responsibility as a baseball player. Everything else that comes with putting the uniform on, he said, is being cherished.
“I’m here to do a job, kind of, so I try to focus on that every day,” Dardar said. “But at the same time, I try to take in every moment, really, so I can remember it for the rest of my life.”
