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BREAKING: Rice Baseball to part ways with Jose Cruz Jr.

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Jose Cruz Jr. will no longer be the head coach of Rice Baseball, effective immediately. The Owls are making a leadership change within the program.

Just 16 games into the 2025 Rice Baseball season, Jose Cruz Jr. is out as its head coach, sources tell The Roost. Cruz was informed of the decision on Thursday, and the team was told shortly afterward.

Despite Cruz’s beloved status as a player and supporter of the program over the years, the results were lacking on the field, leading to this moment. The program sits at 2-14 on the season, most recently losing to Texas A&M-Corpus Christi for the second time in three years—Rice had previously been unbeaten against the Islanders, 20-0 all time.

Cruz leaves Rice with a record of 63-126 across four seasons. Holding anyone to the standard set during the legendary run of Wayne Graham, whom the Owls honored earlier this season, isn’t reasonable. However, a .333 winning percentage was far from adequate, and an active losing streak of 10 consecutive defeats made it clear to decision-makers that it was time for a reset.

A search is expected to begin soon to find Cruz’s replacement. Pitching coach Parker Bangs will take over as the Owls’ interim head coach for the remainder of the season and will lead the team effective immediately, beginning with a four-game series against Houston Christian this weekend.

Stay tuned to The Roost on Patreon for updates as well as game analysis and more as the Owls look to finish out a bumpy campaign with most of the season still ahead of them.

** Photo Credit: Maria Lysaker **
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2025 Rice Baseball Season Preview

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Rice Baseball is set to enter Year 4 under Jose Cruz Jr with what he believes to be the Owls’ most talented team of his tenure. Can Owls take flight this season?

Head coach Jose Cruz Jr. was quick to not promise the moon when he arrived on campus in the summer of 2021. He spoke then about building things the right way, acquiring talent and developing that talent within the Rice baseball culture. From there, the next step was winning games. It was always a long term plan, at least, that’s how the message was conveyed.

Three seasons in, Cruz and the Rice faithful are hoping enough of a foundation has been laid to turn those aspirational ideals into tangible wins. “We’re getting better every year, we’re getting better. The mentality is better. The athletes are better. The physiques are better,” Cruz said. “Every year we’re just going to keep getting better.”

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Rice Baseball wraps up tough Year 3 under Jose Cruz Jr.

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Rice Baseball has closed the book on an up-and-down 2024 season as the program and head coach Jose Cruz Jr hope for brighter days ahead.

Three years into the Jose Cruz Jr. era, Rice baseball won its first postseason game of any kind since 2019, taking top-seeded ECU down to the wire twice in their final week of the season and coming up just short. Rice won the most games it’s ever won under Cruz, (23) the most conference games it’s ever won under Cruz (11), and took a weekend series from a Top 25 team (Louisiana) on the road for the first time under Cruz.

All of that is true, however, the other side of the coin is equally real and much less glamorous.

A team that Cruz described frequently as the best team he’s had yet at Rice finished 13 games under .500. They made the AAC Tournament on a tiebreaker, nearly sunk by a three-game sweep at the hands of a Memphis team that finished dead-last in the league. They were at the bottom of the conference in most offensive statistics, striking out almost 10 times for every home run they hit.

For much of the season, they were a bad baseball team underperforming their records in each of the prior two seasons before catching fire late. To call this season uneven would be generous. For a while, it was a runaway train, finally salvaged before it ran completely off the tracks. That reconnection and refocusing is what Cruz says he’ll remember most about this squad.

“At one point I think we were like one and nine in conference or something like that, so for us to have played well enough to get in [to the AAC Tournament] was really remarkable.”

According to Cruz, that late-season surge helped solidify a culture and an identity that he felt hadn’t quite materialized yet in full.

More: Rice Baseball wraps up 2024 season with AAC Tournament loss to ECU

“This season we ended up creating an identity for ourselves. [We] created what we are about, especially on the offensive side, deciding what the standard is, and what we expect of our guys in order for you to be in the lineup. I think all the guys that were bought in ended up being the guys that ended up playing a lot and ended up elevating us really to be able to make the tournament and go this far.”

And therein lies the conundrum with the Cruz-led Owls and the biggest question mark about this program moving forward. Why did it take three years to find that identity? And if the Owls have found it, what’s it going to take for this program to get out of the conference basement?

“I’m excited for the talent level to elevate moving forward. I think we’re going to have better athletes each year,” Cruz said, painting the implicit picture that this team will be better once it gets better players, players that are on the way in the form of, “my best recruiting class coming in next year.”

As we’ve seen with other Rice sports in recent years, a slow start doesn’t mean there isn’t hope for the future. Mike Bloomgren and football turned a woeful 2-win team into a back-to-back postseason-caliber program. It took time and talent, the two things Cruz continues to assure all onlookers remain on track.

Losing is a hard pill to swallow, especially at a program with as robust a history as Rice baseball possesses. If more talent is truly all this team needs, 2025 should be — and in many ways must be — the year everything comes together and this program gets back on track. Everyone is tired of tough seasons, Cruz the foremost, and while patience exists to allow him to build, it won’t be there forever. At some point, the wins need to come.

“The alumni’s support is great. The athletic department support is great. It is a new chapter in Rice baseball,” Cruz vowed, speaking that bright future into existence. “It’s exciting times for us.”

This game marks the end of the 2024 Rice baseball regular season. Thanks to everyone who has followed along with us this year and read our content. There’s plenty more on the way. Make sure you’re subscribed on Patreon for deep dives on the pitching staff, lineup and more in the weeks to come. If you’d like to send us a one-time token of appreciation, you can donate here. Thanks for joining us on the journey. Next season can’t get here soon enough.



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Jose Cruz Jr. and the trajectory Rice Baseball: April 2024 Q&A

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Rice Baseball head coach Jose Cruz Jr. has hit a rough spot midway through the 2024 season. Can he right the ship?

It’s been an up-and-down season for Rice baseball, which has only recently started to rebound after a tough stretch during the spring. As come with any stretch of defeats, questions came in regarding the future of Rice baseball and what to make of the program under head coach Jose Cruz Jr. This month’s Q&A digs into those concerns and offers some potential answers for the future of one of the Owls’ historic programs.

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Q: I know you try to accentuate the positive and the Cruz family is a famous part of Rice baseball but can Jose Cruz, Jr. fix the Rice baseball program?

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Rice Baseball wrestles with tough Year 2 with Jose Cruz Jr.

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Rice Baseball will have a sour taste in its mouth after a tough 2023 campaign, forced to reckon with a challenging season as they depart C-USA.

Watching Florida Atlantic celebrate on their own field was not quite how Rice baseball had envisioned watching their 2023 season come to a close. Even after battling well into the final weekend to earn the final spot in the Conference USA Tournament, an appearance without any wins seemed a hollow achievement when compared to preseason hopes.

“Obviously, we have some work to do,” head coach Jose Cruz Jr. said in the moments following the Owls’ final game of the year. “I’m already kind of formulating a plan for the fall and a plan to be back here and do a little more damage.”

Getting back to the postseason is a must, even with the leap to the American conference, which will officially take place this offseason. But before the Owls get there, they’ll be forced to reckon with a year of frustrations.

In addition to the more crushing defeats, Rice baseball was 5-11 in one-run games. They were 3-7 when tied after seven innings. Beyond just bad luck, when things were bad, they were really bad. The Owls’ longest winning streak of the season was three games. Their longest losing streak, nine games, tied the modern program record and was the longest of any Rice team since 1987.

Rice was picked to finish eighth in the preseason conference polls and earned the eighth seed in the conference tournament. In some respects, the season was on par with the hand they’d been dealt. The next objective for Cruz Jr. and company is to find a way to take that next step. Should the roster survive excess attrition from the draft and the transfer portal, there’s reason to keep the faith.

“We do have a lot of pieces. We will be an older team and we’ll have a little more experience now that we know what it’s like,” Cruz Jr. said. “What this tournament is like and the intensity you need to have in order to succeed here.”

Freshman standout Ben Royo will be back, as will sophomore ace Parker Smith. Veterans and core players like Pierce Gallo, Connor Walsh, Jack Riedel, Guy Garibay, Manny Garza, Justin Long and Matthew Linskey all have eligibility remaining, too. And that’s not an exhaustive list.

More: Parker Smith’s journey from hometown kid to Rice Baseball ace

Add in the right pieces from the incoming recruiting class and another transfer or too and the Owls have the makings of a roster that should be more experienced and talented than the 2023 squad was. Ultimately, they’ll have to prove it on the field.

That can’t happen until next February, though. For now, Rice baseball and Jose Cruz Jr. have to continue to press what they believe to be the right buttons and continue to build a team that can compete night in and night out. It’ll be another busy offseason on South Main once again.

“All in all, I’m pretty optimistic for the future,” Cruz Jr. said. “We’re getting better. We’re getting better.”



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