With loaded roster, expectations soaring for Georgia Tech baseball

“At the end of the day it doesn’t mean anything. You gotta go out there and put it on the field. We’ve seen plenty of teams in the past that have very high expectations and don’t get it done. We are confident about our skill set on the field against any other team in the country.”

Burress is part of a loaded roster that features three preseason all-Americans and a bevy of all-ACC level players returning to play for coach James Ramsey in Ramsey’s first season as skipper. Ramsey, previously the program’s associate head coach, was promoted in June to succeed Danny Hall, who retired at the end of the 2025 season.

Ramsey not only gets to trot out Burress every day as his center fielder, but also has junior Vahn Lackey (MLB’s No. 18 professional prospect among college players) crouching behind the plate and sophomore Alex Hernandez (the 2025 ACC freshman of the year) taking his glove into right field. First baseman Kent Schmidt, who hit .397 in 40 games, is back, too.

If that wasn’t enough, Tech brought in Jarren Advincula, an infielder who spent two seasons at California and hit .342 with a team-leading 81 hits last season. Ryan Zuckerman hit 13 homers and drove in 48 runs for Pittsburgh in 2025 and transferred to Tech to play third base.

“I’m a little bit too confident, to be honest with you. Gotta bring it down a little bit,” Lackey said about the Tech lineup. “But this lineup is exactly what we wanted. We can do anything we really want to and as long as we stay grounded throughout this preseason and just knowing that it’s a baseball game and just because we have a stacked lineup doesn’t mean that the game’s gonna be easy. Ramsey reminds us all the time, ‘We’re gonna have to work for it no matter what.’”

Of course, hitting rarely has been an issue for the Tech program over the years. Can it piece together a competent pitching staff under pitching coach Matt Taylor?

Mason Patel, Tate McKee, Caden Spivey, Kayden Campbell, Carson Ballard and Brett Barfield are a few of the familiar names expected to toe the rubber at any point this season. Junior Dylan Loy, who pitched in the 2024 College World Series, joined the program out of Tennessee, and Justin Shadek transferred in from Rutgers, where he made 15 starts.

“We’re as deep as we’ve been,” Ramsey said of the pitching staff. “We have six guys or more that I would feel comfortable rolling out there at any given moment. If you told me that guy was pitching on the weekend I’d say we’ve got a really good chance to win a lot of games.

“I feel as good as I’ve felt about a lot of the guys that are gonna touch the ball on the mound, and the formula we’ll get figured out.”

After the team’s fall season, and before the players left campus between semesters, Ramsey said he showed the Jackets a video of past Tech teams. But the montage wasn’t a highlight of big wins and championships, but rather of where the program has come up short in recent seasons.

Tech last won an NCAA Regional in 2006, also the last time the program was represented at the College World Series. Each passing spring the expectation has increased for the next batch of Jackets to finally break that drought.

Not too many of those past teams, however, have been as highly touted as this one.

“It was the things that I told them that have continued to fuel me personally and fuel the rest of our staff that’s been here throughout the journey, and then also the players that have been a part of those moments that we haven’t gotten it done,” Ramsey said of the aforementioned video. “I think that a big thing for this team to just feel the weight of it from the program and kind of get that out of the way.

“This team, they’re very mission-minded. I think the vision has been set since Day One, and they’ve followed along every step of the way.”