The baseball program, partly hampered by being the northernmost school in the heavily warm-weather SEC (until Missouri's arrival in 2013), has historically achieved only modest success at best.

The Wildcats won their first three regional games in 1988 to move to within one win of the CWS, but lost twice in the championship round to 1987 national champion Stanford, which went on to successfully defend its title.

Wildcats baseball hit bottom at the turn of the 21st century, with only one winning season from 1997 through 2004, and five straight last-place finishes in the SEC East from 2001 through 2005.

They went from worst to first in the SEC, winning a regular-season conference title for the first time in three decades, and being ranked as high as fourth in the country by one major baseball poll during the season.

They then fell into a tailspin but rebounded at the end of the year to just miss the SEC playoffs after a Tennessee Volunteers win.

Cohen left for Mississippi State after the season, and pitching coach Gary Henderson was named his successor.

Henderson directed the Wildcats to a school-record 45-win season, with UK completing its best finishes in the SEC and NCAA tournaments in school annals.

At the end of the 2016 season, Henderson resigned, and the university replaced him with Nick Mingione, who had previously been an assistant coach at UK and Mississippi State under Cohen.

[2] Dick Howser Trophy[3] Golden Spikes Award[4] The following is a list of Kentucky's All-Americans: Several Wildcats players have gone on to play in Major League Baseball.