Nathan Bannister joined San Diego baseball in July of 2026 as an assistant coach. He is set to begin his first season with the Toreros in 2027.
Bannister oversees the Torero pitching staff.
He arrived at USD after four seasons at Grand Canyon, where he served as the Lopes' pitching coach beginning in July 2022 and stepped in as the program's interim head coach on March 27, 2026.
In Bannister's first two seasons on staff, Grand Canyon won back-to-back WAC Regular-Season Championships, and in 2024 the Lopes claimed the program's first NCAA Tournament victory at the Division I level — defeating No. 15 Arizona 9-4 before beating No. 25 Dallas Baptist 12-10 to advance to a regional final.
His first Grand Canyon staff closed the 2023 regular season with a 2.84 ERA over the final 12 games — all wins — while producing three All-WAC selections in first-teamer Daniel Avitia and second-teamers Zach Thornton and Brodie Cooper-Vassalakis. Thornton went on to become a fifth-round pick of the New York Mets that summer, while right-hander Cody Tucker signed a free-agent deal with the San Francisco Giants.
Bannister joined Grand Canyon from the Seattle Mariners organization, where he spent four seasons as a pitching coach, most recently with the High-A Modesto Nuts.
A native of Phoenix, Arizona, Bannister pitched at the University of Arizona from 2013 to 2016, going 19-7 with a 3.22 ERA across 245 2/3 career innings in 61 appearances and 27 starts. As a senior in 2016, he went 12-2 with a 2.59 ERA in 142 1/3 innings while helping lead the Wildcats back to the College World Series.
A 28th-round selection of the Seattle Mariners in the 2016 MLB Draft, Bannister reached Triple-A Tacoma by his sixth professional appearance and made 54 starts across two professional seasons, logging 285 2/3 innings.
At Liberty High School in Peoria, Arizona, Bannister was named the 2012 Arizona Republic Big Schools Player of the Year and earned USA Today All-USA second-team honors.
