Gonzaga Baseball Loses Big Pieces as Mikey Bell, Landon Hood Enter Transfer Portal
After suddenly bowing out of contention for an NCAA postseason spot following their 0-2 showing at the WCC tournament, Gonzaga baseball has received even more tough news in the early stages of its offseason.
Third baseman Mikey Bell and right-handed pitcher Landon Hood have each entered the transfer portal, leaving sizable voids on the Zags’ roster in their wake. Both of them are coming off award-winning campaigns for their individual performances in Spokane, but the next year of their baseball lives will be played elsewhere.
The two are in different stages as collegiate athletes. Bell will be a redshirt senior in 2027 after playing one season at Cuesta Community College before winning back-to-back West Coast Player of the Year awards as a Bulldog. Hood, on the other hand, graduated from Canyon Year High School a year ago and took home WCC Freshman of the Year honors. He is now looking for the best destination for his development as a rising arm with growing intrigue in a future MLB Draft, entering the portal with a “do not contact" tag.
Anchoring the middle of Gonzaga’s lineup throughout his two-year tenure in Spokane, Bell became the second player to ever be named the best player in the WCC in successive seasons. Overall, Bell slashed .369/.448/.610 as a Zag with 20 homers and 92 runs driven in.
His career batting average is the ninth-highest mark among all Bulldogs to play at least two seasons. A doubles machine, Bell logged 41 two-baggers in his time with GU, including 24 in 2026, which ranked fifth-most by a Zag all-time in a single season. Bell’s 85 hits this past season were also the ninth-most for a Gonzaga hitter.
He is one of several players tied for most hits (five) in one game, which he did three times in 2026, and doubles (three). Bell posted 23 and 24 multi-hit games, respectively, in 2025 and 2026, including a 21-game hitting streak in what would be his final year as a member of Gonzaga.
Although his defense was sloppier in 2026, logging 12 errors compared to just posting two the year prior, and he chases more frequently than desired, Bell has a knack for putting the barrel on the baseball and making hard contact consistently. After terrorizing WCC opponents for the last two seasons, Bell will be sorely missed by the Bulldogs at third as they transition into the Pac-12.
Gaining professional hype in a breakout freshman campaign, Hood couldn’t have performed better during his first year at the collegiate level. The hard-throwing righty notched a 2.48 ERA and a 0.98 WHIP as he split time as a starter and a bullpen arm for GU. But diving into his appearances, the rare times when Hood started over his 16 outings were when he allowed the vast majority of his damage.
Starting out as a long reliever, Hood didn’t allow an earned run in his first 16 1/3 frames of the season. He then made three consecutive starts but didn’t eclipse 4 1/3 innings pitched in any of them, posting an ERA north of 9 in that stretch. That was also when Hood struggled with his command, walking nine hitters over that span. Outside of that, he walked just 7.6% of opposing batters while fanning 32.7%. Hood’s final start would come over a month later, as he tossed 5 1/3 frames of two-run ball in a win over San Francisco.
But in 29 2/3 innings out of the bullpen, Hood’s ERA was a minuscule 0.30, with his lone run allowed coming on a solo shot by Seattle U in his second-to-last appearance of the year. Stifling the opposition consistently, Hood was the only arm on the Bulldogs’ staff to hold hitters to a sub-.200 average, finishing the season with a mark of .162. In the Zags’ season-ending loss to the Dons in the conference tourney, Hood fired 6 2/3 shutout frames with eight strikeouts out of the ‘pen.
He won six WCC Freshman of the Week awards throughout the year and was named to the WCC All-Second Team as well. The 6-3, 200-pounder sat in the mid 90s with his fastball, garnering strong induced vertical break and arm-side run while touching 96 mph at times from a flat angle. Pairing the heater with a slower, fading changeup and a curveball with sweeping traits, Hood has the arsenal that pitching labs dream of getting their hands on.
Hood and Bell are major losses for a Gonzaga squad that is already losing 13 seniors, including all-conference players Maddox Haley, Justin Feld, and Ricky Sánchez. Just like how the two departees were brought in, head coach Mark Machtolf will likely look to available JUCO products and young talent out of high school to supplement next season’s roster.
