GREENVILLE — Former Mississippi State baseball assistant coach Jake Gautreau is heading to East Carolina University, joining veteran head coach Cliff Godwin’s staff as the hitting coach, per ECU beat reporter Stephen Igoe.
Gautreau spent eight years in Starkville, working with four different head coaches and helping the team make three College World Series appearances, winning the program’s only national title in 2021 under the leadership of head coach Chris Lemonis.
Gautreau developed a reputation for being a players’ coach, working closely with the offense as hitting coach and helping to produce several prolific offenses in his time in Starkville. He was named the D1Baseball Assistant of the Year in 2019 after helping the team back to Omaha in the first year under Lemonis.
Lemonis was fired during the 2025 season after a series of poor conference results, and pitching coach Justin Parker was named interim head coach. Parker, Gautreau, and assistant Kyle Cheesebrough helped lead the team to the postseason with a 9-1 finish to the regular season, and took them to the Tallahassee Regional, where the Bulldogs eventually fell to hosts Florida State.
Parker remained in Starkville as the pitching coach under new head coach, Brian O’Connor, while Cheesebrough and Gautreau both left the program. Cheesebrough has since signed as an assistant coach at Houston.
Gautreau joins a Pirates program that went 35-27 in 2025, winning the American Athletic Conference tournament to earn an automatic berth in the NCAA tournament. The team lost to eventual College World Series finalists Coastal Carolina in the Conway Regional.
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