Trent Caraway is a long ways from home. Growing up just south of Los Angeles and spending his early college years at Oregon State, Caraway has been a west coast kid his entire life.

There’s a lot that made sense about this move to the SEC and LSU in particular for Caraway. He wants to be a major leaguer and over the past four years, there’s arguably been no program moving more talent to the professional level than LSU. Caraway comes in with his own personal goals of getting to that level as most players do. 

But he wants to win a championship before his college career is over and the blueprint of the last three years made it a pretty easy decision when Jay Johnson and the Tigers came calling. 

Caraway was one of those pickups that the Tigers made with the same idea of a Tommy White or more recently Daniel Dickinson. Those became championship level infielders and high impact pieces to those teams and while not directly comparable with their games, the vision for Caraway is to make a strong impact on this team right from the start. 

In two seasons at Oregon State, Caraway batted .281 with 14 home runs and 57 RBI. He started all but one game for the Beavers in their pursuit of the College World Series last season. The Beavers reaching Omaha was in part due to the postseason success of Caraway, who hit six home runs in the NCAA tournament, the most by a single player in Beavers postseason history. 

But there were ways in which Caraway, coming off such a strong finish to 2025, felt he could improve and that’s been his goal this offseason. He’s not only starting to see some of the benefits from an offensive perspective but he’s seeing it on defense as well, where he’s the runaway favorite to start the season over at third base. 

There are more reasons why the move down south made sense for Caraway. The weather is a complete polar opposite to what he has experienced at Oregon State this time of year, despite what’s transpired this week with temperatures reaching the 20s. It’s also as passionate a fanbase as there is in college baseball, which is something Caraway is ready to embrace when the games get started on Feb. 13. 

“LSU is just, I mean the baseball is just different. The competition is on a whole different level,” Caraway said. 

Here’s everything Caraway said in his first interview of the spring: