The baseball program at UW began play in the 1901 season, in which it went 4–6 under head coach Fred Schlock. After not competing in 1902, the team returned in the 1903 season. From its inception through the end of the 1915 season, the team did not belong to a conference. Prior to 1923, most of the program's head coaches served only one or two seasons, with
Dode Brinker being the only exception. In his seven seasons as the team's head coach, Washington had a 59–28 record. Prior to the 1923 season,
Tubby Graves became the program's head coach; the Huskies won seven PCC North Division titles, all in Graves' first ten seasons.--> In 1932, the Huskies won the North Division title with a 13–4 conference record, the division title was the team's last under Graves, who coached through the end of the 1946 season. In reaction, five former PCC members, including Washington, formed the Athletic Association of Western Universities (AAWU), which began play in the 1959–1960 school year. With the addition of several other schools, the conference eventually became known as the
Pac-12 Conference. Washington struggled in its first two decades after beginning play in the AAWU in the 1960 season. It did not have a winning conference record in its first 19 seasons in the AAWU (renamed the Pacific-8 Conference following the 1968 season). The stretch included five consecutive last-place finishes from 1967 to 1971 under head coach
Ken Lehman. The program had its first winning conference record in the 1979 season, when it finished in second place in the North Division of the Pacific-10 Conference, which had been renamed prior to that season. In 1992, MacDonald's final season, the Huskies qualified for their second NCAA tournament with a 39–21 record and North Division title. The team was seeded sixth in the six-team
West Regional. After defeating first-seeded
Arizona and fourth-seeded
Fresno State in its opening two games, the team lost consecutive games to
Pepperdine and
Hawaii and was eliminated. , 2008 and 2009
National League Cy Young Award Winner, shown while pitching for the
San Francisco Giants. Following the 1992 season, MacDonald left Washington to become the head coach at
Navy and was succeeded by Husky assistant coach Ken Knutson. In 1993, Knutson's first season, the team won the Pac-10 North and had a 39-19 overall record but did not receive an
at-large bid to the
NCAA tournament. In 1994, the team did qualify for the NCAA tournament and played in the
Midwest II Regional. , shown while playing for
Major League Baseball's
Chicago White Sox in
2011. Prior to the 1998 season, the program opened
Husky Ballpark, a newly built on-campus home venue that replaced Graves Field. In the three seasons from 1999 to 2001, the program finished with a conference
winning percentage of .500 or worse and did not qualify for the NCAA tournament. From 2002 to 2004, however, the team qualified for three consecutive NCAA tournaments. Following the 2009 season, head coach Knutson was fired after four consecutive losing seasons in the Pac-10. He was replaced by
Indiana State head coach
Lindsay Meggs, who played college ball at
UCLA. In Meggs' first four seasons, the Huskies' highest win total was 30 (in 2012), and their highest Pac-12 finish was a tie for 6th (in 2013). In
2014, the program reached its first
NCAA tournament in a decade, going 41–17 and finishing second in the Pac-12. At the
Oxford Regional, Washington went 2–2, defeating three-seed
Georgia Tech twice and losing to host
Ole Miss twice, both games by one run. The Huskies' 2014 success coincided with extensive, $15 million renovations to Husky Ballpark.
Conference affiliations • Independent (1901–1915) •
Pacific Coast Conference (1916–1959), independent in war years of 1918 and 1944 •
Pac-12 Conference (1960–2024) • Athletic Association of Western Universities, 1960–1966 • Pacific-8 Conference, 1967–1978 • Pacific-10 Conference, 1979–2011 •
Big Ten Conference (2024-Present) ==Washington in the NCAA tournament==