How Kentucky built its best team in school history

With internal development and astute transfer evaluations, Kentucky built a team that's two wins from Omaha.

Photo by Ethan Rand of UK Athletics

Kentucky outfielder Ryan Waldschmidt was joined by 800 other players on the same day when he entered the transfer portal during the summer of 2022 following an impressive freshman season at Charleston Southern. It was Jake Scott’s job, then the Director of Player Development for the Wildcats, to help sift through the portal and learn about each player.

Waldschmidt’s name was familiar to Scott. Prior to joining Kentucky’s staff in 2020, Scott had sent a tweet of Waldschmidt in a high school tournament to former UK recruiting coordinator Will Coggin, advising him that he might be worth checking out. Ultimately, Waldschmidt landed at Charleston Southern and immediately became one of the best hitters in the Big South, slashing .310/.485/.559 with more walks (36) than strikeouts (26), plus nine home runs.

“There weren’t a lot of metrics on him for batted balls, exit velocity and things like that, but he did have some home runs,” said Scott, who is now a high school head baseball and golf coach in his hometown of Booneville, Mississippi. “All of a sudden you’re looking at a guy who walks more than he strikes out, can hit home runs and can steal bases. All of those things translate, and they’ve all translated for him at Kentucky.”