FRESNO, Calif. - Fresno State baseball head coach Mike Batesole has announced the addition of Troy Buckley to the Bulldogs coaching staff on Thursday.
One of the nation's top pitching coaches in the nation, Buckley arrives in Fresno after three seasons at Mountain West rival Nevada where he was the Wolf Pack associate head coach and pitching coach from 2020 to 2022.
In his collegiate coaching career, Buckley has coached 31 major leaguers, with 99 players getting drafted and five going in the first round. As an assistant and head coach at Long Beach State, he made nine postseason appearances including three trips to NCAA Super Regionals.
Buckley served as the head coach at Long Beach State from 2011 to 2019 posting a 260-231-1 overall record. In three of his seasons at the helm, Buckley led the Dirtbags to NCAA Regional appearances in 2014 and 2016, with a NCAA Super Regional berth in 2017. That year, Buckley led LBSU to a 42-20-1 record and Big West Conference championship with a 20-4 record. He was named the Big West Coach of the Year that same season as his Dirtbags were ranked No. 8 in the nation by Baseball America, as eight players from that team went on to be drafted.
Before returning to Long Beach as the team's associate head coach in 2010, Buckley spent two seasons as a pitching coordinator in the Pittsburgh Pirates minor league system. He had also previously served as an assistant coach at Long Beach State from 2001 to 2007.
Buckley made a huge impact on the storied program as an assistant coach. In 2002, he helped the Dirtbags post a 2.99 ERA which ranked fifth nationally.
The following year, Buckley coached another big leaguer in Jared Weaver to two more dominant seasons as LBSU reached the Super Regionals with a 39-21 record. Weaver then led the staff to a 3.11 ERA in 2004 under Buckley's guidance, which ranked as the fourth-best nationally. Weaver was selected 12th overall in the 2004 MLB Draft after posting a 15-1 record, 1.62 ERA and 213 strikeouts while being named the National Player of the Year that season.
Buckley began his coaching career with the Montreal Expos Double-AA affiliate as a hitting instructor and third base coach. Following that season, he became a pitching coach for the Gulf Coast League Expos before returning to his alma mater from 1998-2000 to serve as the pitching coach and recruiting coordinator with the Broncos.
Buckley's illustrious baseball career began as a standout catcher for three years at Santa Clara University where he was named the West Coast Conference Player of the Year and second-team All-American in 1988. That season, he slashed .442 with 82 RBI with both marks setting single-season school records.
The Los Altos, Calif. native was drafted in the ninth round of the 1989 MLB Draft by the Minnesota Twins, and was in the minor leagues from 1990-1995 where he played as high as Triple-AAA before becoming a coach.
Buckley has two daughters, Knoa and Maggie and a son Casey, who played baseball at the University of Michigan.