The Frierson Files: Busy, ‘really successful’ offseason for Bulldog baseball

Published 8:30 am Friday, July 25, 2025

It has been a busy offseason for Wes Johnson, Georgia’s Ike Cousins Head Baseball Coach, and the Bulldog program. Georgia had numerous players selected in the 2025 MLB draft, several more signed free-agent contracts, and saw a lot of players come and go through the transfer portal. With more additions possibly still to come.

In the modern age of college baseball, and all college sports, really, the offseason is about roster management and the transfer portal. Georgia had a lot of areas it wanted to address in the portal, including left-handed pitching and power hitting, and Johnson said Thursday during a video conference with reporters that he was very happy with the players the Bulldogs have added.

“I think we’ve been really successful,” he said, pointing out that the Bulldogs have signed transfer hitters to replace the nearly 100 homers that departed players hit last season, as well as signing pitchers who threw about 600 innings to replace the roughly 450 innings tossed by players who have moved on.

On the first day of the MLB draft earlier this month, pitchers JT Quinn and Brian Curley were selected. Pitcher Leighton Finley and slugger Slate Alford were among the players drafted on the second day. Curley and Finley were two of the Bulldogs’ weekend starters, pitching a combined 134.2 innings, while Alford was second on the team with 19 home runs, a .331 batting average and 63 runs batted in. All-Americans Robbie Burnett (. 307 average, 20 homers and 66 RBI) and Ryland Zaborowski (SEC-leading .370 average, 17 homers and 61 RBI) signed free-agent contracts after the draft.

Johnson said Georgia is very strategic in its approach to signing players out of the portal, and the Bulldogs have had great success so far in his two seasons in charge. Curley, Alford, Burnett and Zaborowski were all portal additions last season.

“I don’t want to give away all our secrets in the portal and how we go about our business, but we have a very complex model that we’ve been fortunate enough to put together and bake a lot of ingredients into a model of things that we really value and we think fit our ballpark,” he said,

He said one focus is power — power hitting and power pitching.

“When you look at that, it really shortens your focus and shortens the number of players you go after in the portal,” he said.

Not all of the paperwork on the portal additions is done, which limited who Johnson was allowed to discuss. Two transfers he did discuss were two-way player Kenny Ishikawa of Seattle University and pitcher Joey Volchko of Stanford.

Ishikawa, a left-hander from Yokohama, Japan, batted .318 and hit eight home runs as a sophomore last season, with just 28 strikeouts in 201 at-bats. He also struck out 73 batters in 66.1 innings on the mound.

“Kenny would pitch and hit on the same day,” Johnson said. “He’s really, really hard to strike out offensively. We’re going to try to get a little more power out of him. … You look at how many left-handers we’re bringing in, obviously, we didn’t have a whole lot of those last year, so we’ve got left-handers. And Kenny is one of those guys. Kenny can start, Kenny can come in and close the game out.”

Volchko, a righty, pitched 113.0 innings over his two seasons at Stanford, starting 21 games and striking out 109 batters. Johnson said Volchko has “the most talented arm we’ve had in my time here.”

“You look at pure, raw talent, yeah, Joey’s got a chance to be a top-10, top-15 (draft) pick next year,” he said.

Last offseason, Foley Field was undergoing a major renovation and the baseball program had partially moved out to Athens Academy. Johnson said having recruits in then made for “a tough sell” because the field was under construction. Now, with the $45 million project complete in time for last season and during the recruitment period, it has made a big difference.

“The faility is phenomenal, and it has truly helped in recruiting and this summer,” he said, adding that some of the guys are already in town lifting weights and doing the workouts they’re allowed to do per NCAA rules. “I think that’s just how you get chemistry and synergy flowing, right? I mean, at the end of the day, these guys are with each other every day, and a lot of them are back here and doing what they need to do.”

Assistant Sports Communications Director John Frierson is the staff writer for the UGA Athletic Association and curator of the ITA Men’s Tennis Hall of Fame.