Missouri baseball coach Steve Bieser fired after SEC tournament loss
Missouri baseball head coach Steve Bieser has been fired, sources confirmed to the Tribune on Sunday. Bieser and the Tigers finished the 2023 season with a loss in the first round of the SEC tournament against Auburn.
The university made the firing official in a press release later on Sunday.
"Coach Bieser represented the University with a high level of character and integrity," MU athletics director Desiree Reed-Francois said. "We are grateful for his contributions to our program, on and off the field, and we wish him, Diahann, and their family the very best in the future."
The school said it will honor the buyout terms of Bieser's contract, which was set to run through July 31, 2024. He made $475,000.08 in base salary and non-salary compensation for the 2022-23 season.
Bieser and the Tigers finished the season 30-24, but just 10-20 in conference play in a year riddled with injuries. MU went out in the first round of the SEC tournament against Auburn, which also swept the Tigers in the final series of the regular season.
“I would like to thank the University of Missouri for entrusting me to lead this program for the past seven years,” Bieser said in the release. “We have faced many challenges along the way, but the bottom line is we just didn’t win enough games in this tough and rugged conference. I want to thank all of the players that I have had a great opportunity to coach. You’ve always represented this program in a first-class manner and I’m proud of you. I wish our current players great success and I will be pulling for you. God has a different plan for me. Keep representing the C2E way.”
Bieser came to Missouri after a stint as head coach at Southeast Missouri State, when he was twice named the Ohio Valley Conference’s coach of the year. He took over the Tigers ahead of the 2017 season.
His tenure at Missouri got off to a solid start, but never recovered after the 2020 pandemic-shortened season. In Bieser’s first season, the Tigers went 36-23, 14-16 in league play, good for fourth place in the SEC East.
MU finished sixth in the East in 2018, before returning to fourth for the 2019 season. In 2020, the Tigers got off to an 11-5 start before the season ended due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Bieser and Missouri missed the SEC tournament in 2021, going just 8-22 in league play, 15-36 overall. The Tigers improved slightly in 2022, but still missed out on a trip to Hoover.
Bieser ended his seven-season MU tenure with a 188-155-1 record, 67-112-1 in SEC play. According to the release, Missouri will conduct a national search for his replacement.
According to the release, Missouri will conduct a national search for his replacement. The MU program's resources have been meager compared to the upper echelon of the SEC, with the Tigers spending just $2,587,723 on the sport during fiscal year 2022 according to the school's NCAA revenues and expenses report, obtained by the Tribune through an open records request.
For context, Vanderbilt head coach Tim Corbin made $2,447,059 in total compensation, including incentive and deferred money during the 2021 calendar year according to the Tennessean. Bieser's base salary made him the lowest-paid coach in the league.
"Baseball is important to our University, our conference, and our state," Reed-Francois said. "We understand the vital role baseball plays, and we are committed to further increasing our investment in the program and look forward to future successes. We will work quickly and expeditiously to find the candidate who is the best fit to return Mizzou Baseball to the national stage."
This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: Missouri baseball head coach Steve Bieser fired
