What’s next for the Auburn baseball program?

With the resignation of head coach Tom Slater on Saturday, the Tigers are looking for their third head coach in the past five seasons. Auburn has retained the search firm of Carr and Associates, headed by former Florida athletic director Bill Carr, to assist in the search for Slater’s replacement.

Though the college baseball regular season is over, most successful coaches will stay busy for a few weeks. Conference tournaments begin later this week, followed by the NCAA Regionals May 30-June 2, Super Regionals June 6-9 and the College World Series June 13-23.

If any of AU’s top targets are still active, that could slow the search.

The search is still in its early stages, but there are several possibilities for Auburn, including three successful in-state coaches.

Troy coach Bobby Pierce, a former Alabama player, has major-conference experience — he was an assistant at Bama for four seasons. And he’s had success at Troy: A 213-137 record, including consecutive NCAA Tournament bids.

Former AU catcher Casey Dunn, the head coach at Samford, has been widely speculated as a candidate for the Auburn job. Dunn, who played at AU from 1996-1999, doesn’t have any coaching experience at the SEC level, but his 119-110 record in four seasons at Samford is the school’s best four-year mark in decades.

Jacksonville State’s Jim Case, a former Mississippi State assistant, led the Gamecocks to an Ohio Valley Conference regular-season championship this season. Case has led the Gamecocks to two NCAA Tournaments in five seasons.

Other possibilities include New Orleans coach Tom Walter, who has led the Privateers to 76 wins over the past two seasons, and former Florida and Mississippi State coach Pat McMahon, currently managing the New York Yankees’ Class A minor-league affiliate in Staten Island, N.Y.

The first task for the new coach, whoever he is, will be resolving an often inconsistent stable of pitchers. In the four-year Slater era, Auburn had just two pitchers — John Madden in 2005 and Paul Burnside in 2007 — finish in the top 10 in the Southeastern Conference ERA race.

In 2008, the Tigers allowed almost six runs per game and struck out fewer opposing batters than any other team.

Still, whoever Auburn hires will inherit a team with considerable potential, despite this season’s disappointing record.

Auburn’s top three hitters in 2008 were freshmen Hunter Morris and Brian Fletcher and sophomore Joseph Sanders, who combined for 27 home runs and 143 RBI. None of the trio will be eligible for this season’s MLB draft. Players must be 21 years old or three years removed from high school to be drafted.

Of Auburn’s top 10 position players, only outfielder Mike Bianucci, shortstop Matt Hall and catcher Ryan Jenkins are draft eligible.

Auburn’s two most reliable starting pitchers, left-handers Dayton and Luckie, are also freshmen.

And all those youngsters are likelier to stay put than they would have been in seasons past, thanks to a new NCAA rule restricting transfers in baseball.

In previous seasons, baseball players had a one-time exemption to the NCAA’s usual transfer rule, allowing them to transfer between Division I schools and be eligible to play immediately. Now, if a player transfers from one D-I school to another, he must sit out a season.

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