How Josh Holliday Found the ‘Perfect Fit’ with New Pitching Coach Blake Hawksworth

STILLWATER — Josh Holliday is entering his 14th season as the Cowboys’ head coach, but this will be the first year someone other than Rob Walton is in charge of his pitchers.

Holliday hired Blake Hawksworth this offseason after the aforementioned Walton retired. Hawksworth had spent the past two seasons as Oregon’s pitching coach, a stretch where the Ducks went 82-36.

With this being the first time he’s needed a pitching coach since taking over in Stillwater, Holliday casted a wide net. He said he spoke with people from the Major Leagues, the minors and, of course, college baseball. After compiling a list, he looked into strengths of each candidate, and Holliday said he also looked at where those candidates were at in their lives.

“Every time I picked up the phone and said, ‘What do you think out on the west side of the country? Who’s doing an unbelievable job?’ And his name came back first every single time,” Holliday said. “I had known him a little bit. He pitched with the Cardinals some, and I had met him when Matt (Holliday) was on the team but didn’t know him, I would say, real extensively. Just knew him a little, but when I researched him and had a chance to talk with him, I felt like it was a perfect fit.

“I thought he had a great, balanced set of skills. Passion to recruit, passion to coach, passion to teach — all the things that I think you need to have to be really effective in today’s college baseball. It was a pretty comprehensive exercise. I kept a lot of notes and took names down and called people and really just tried to understand what was out there, really, and wanted to find somebody that I thought could nail it for us and I felt great about.”

Hawksworth’s 2025 Oregon staff posted a 4.10 ERA and 502 strikeouts while holding batters to a .219 average. The Ducks led the NCAA in hits allowed per nine innings with 7.1 while ranking fourth nationally with seven shutouts.

He has also coached pitching staffs at Cal State Fullerton and Grand Canyon.

Hawksworth was at Cal State Fullerton in 2017, a year the Titans made it all the way to Omaha. The Titans had a 3.64 ERA that season while two pitchers earned All-America status.

His year at Grand Canyon was cut short because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but GCU had a 3.44 ERA through 18 games.

Hawksworth was also a decorated player, pitching 183 1/3 Major League innings from 2009 through 2011 with a career ERA of 4.07.

“We talk every single morning for about 30 minutes, just talk about baseball, talk about ideas,” Holliday said. “It’s fun to hear perspective, and Blake’s got a good track record of just his baseball journey in general. He’s learned from some tremendous baseball people, so he’s had that unique experience as a player and a coach to come across some great thinkers in baseball. He had a really close working relationship with Harvey Dorfman, who authored ‘The Mental Game of Baseball,’ ‘The Mental Keys to Hitting,’ ‘The Mental Keys to Pitching,’ just different background in baseball, different learning opportunities that people have. And then you sit down and talk about them, and it kind of shapes your thinking a little bit, and it creates the language that you speak in. So, we’ve had a lot of fun talking baseball.”

As for Hawksworth’s first staff in Stillwater, the Cowboys didn’t add heavily via the transfer portal, but it sounds like UC-Santa Barbara transfer Hudson Barrett is going to be a big piece to the Cowboys’ success this season.

He’s a 6-foot-5 lefty who has spent the past three seasons with the Gauchos. He’s been limited the past two seasons after a Tommy John surgery in 2024, but Barrett was an All-American as a freshman in 2023. He went 5-1 that year with five saves and a 1.92 ERA while striking out 82 batters in 61 innings. Holliday said Barrett will probably pitch in the Cowboys’ opener against Arkansas on Friday.

Mario Pesca returns from last season’s squad. Holliday praised Pesca’s hard work in transforming his body this offseason with Holliday calling Pesca “the best version of himself.” Pesca is listed at 6-foot-8, 236 pounds on OSU’s 2026 roster, a year removed from being listed at 273 pounds.

He had a 3.67 ERA last season in 20 appearances, striking out 53 batters in 56 1/3 innings.

Hawksworth’s staff has experienced some preseason setbacks, as Holliday noted that Hunter Watkins and Matthew Brown, two guys who combined to throw 84 2/3 innings last season, could both miss all of 2026 because of injury.

But Holliday also noted guys like Ethan Lund, Drew Blake, Brennan Phillips, Noah Wech and Stormy Rhodes as guys who Hawksworth has helped continue to develop this offseason.

“I think it’s a lot when you’re learning a bunch of new faces as a coach, and then you’re implementing things like pitching philosophy and working one on one with pitchers and all the different things that go into that relationship,” Holliday said. “Pitchers, they’re very fine-tuned athletes. They take great pride in what they do, so Blake did a great job in the fall of getting to know each kid, understanding what made them tick.

“He watched a lot of film to familiarize himself with their history and really just went to work one day at a time with them. You coach them all a little bit differently, for sure. They all have varying styles of release points and pitch types. Pitchers are definitely special in that regard. Then I think to then start to teach them collectively as a whole, a philosophy of how to execute, how to compete, both on the physical side, but where I think he’s done a great job is on the mental side. Really teaching them a mental process I think he became quite familiar with during his time as a Major League pitcher, and then I think that of a pitching coach. A lot of work, a lot of new faces, but I think he’s developed a strong rapport with these guys in a short amount of time.”