From Rock Bottom to Oh-So-Close To Omaha: Miami Hurricane Baseball’s 2025 Resilience Story

The way coach J.D. Arteaga tells it, the Miami Hurricanes baseball season was at a crossroads early-on. The team could have gone one of two ways after a slaughter rule loss at Florida State Thurs., March 20.

It was an ugly defeat to UM’s rival, dropping the team to a 13-10 record, and it wasn’t something Arteaga was going to take lying down. Enough was enough.

“I was upset with a couple of coaches after that Thursday night loss,” Arteaga told CaneSport. “(I told them) `We might not be a top 10 team, but we’re better than what we’re doing, it’s unacceptable.’ I just knew we were better.”

The message Arteaga gave his coaches … and then to the team … was clear.

Do better.

Be better.

Play better.

And Miami did. The Canes rebounded to win the next game at FSU, 9-6, and UM was competitive in a Sunday loss in Tallahassee. That helped lay the groundwork for what became a run to the final game of Super Regionals: Resiliency.

You saw it after the team was playing up-and-down ball and sat at a 16-16 record at one point – Miami then won eight of the next nine games. Soon after came a six-game win streak. And then, when the team flailed down the stretch with losses in six of seven games entering regionals, the Canes again responded by advancing as the No. 3 seed out of the Hattiesburg, Miss. bracket and coming oh-so-close to beating Louisville (lost deciding game three, 3-2) and advancing to Omaha.

For the record, Miami hasn’t been to the College World Series since 2016.

In the big picture this season has to be considered a success for Arteaga after his first year in 2024 was the program’s first losing campaign since 1957.

Ask Arteaga now, and he tells you he saw this coming even when the team was struggling early-on.

“Even in our down time, I knew this team was capable of more than what we were doing,” Arteaga said. “The resiliency stands out, we went through so much this year. Every season is kind of a roller coaster, but our peaks and valleys this year were so extreme. Sometimes it’s hard to recover from some of those, and this team had an unbelievable ability to recover no matter what and really show up every day without a hangover from the day before. They literally stated 0-0 every day.”

CaneSport message board posters were weighing in on every Miami game this season, as per usual. One poster early in the year during the struggles promised to post a “Fire J.D.” thread after every loss.

He no doubt regrets that now.

For Arteaga, the outside noise was never an issue. And that rubbed off on his team. Maybe the football team can take some notes?

“It’s `Focus on ourselves,’ it’s something I practice myself,” Arteaga said. “I don’t get too caught up in the media, don’t read any of that stuff. The same guys that are talking ill about you are going to be the ones praising you when you do a good job, so that stuff is just noise. It’s just noise, really it’s about focusing on our group, the 36 guys we had in that locker room, the staff we had. That’s all that really matters. I just care about my group, my guys. That’s always been important to me, and that’s something this team took on – worrying about the guys in this locker room. That’s all that really matters.”

As for Arteaga’s final message to his team after the season ended in heartbreaking fashion at Louisville?

“That everything they went through this year will make them better husbands, better fathers, better businessmen – whatever they set out to do,” Arteaga said. “Not everybody has a chance to play professional baseball for a living, but ultimately they’ll all be better for it. They grew so much this season with all the adversity we had, will be better for it.”

Stay tuned tomorrow for a look ahead as Arteaga is hard at work piecing together next year’s roster.