After every Georgia baseball game, players climb the stairs to the terrace of Foley Field, where family, friends and fans wait. Young fans often linger a little longer for an autograph or photo with junior third baseman Tre Phelps.
Kids have had more opportunities to get to know Phelps than some of his teammates. According to the Georgia roster, about 80% of the team transferred from other universities, while Phelps joined the Bulldogs from Georgia Premier Academy in 2023 and has remained ever since.
Recruiting in college baseball is more complex than ever. Programs compete not only with other schools, but also with Major League Baseball organizations that draft players out of high school and again after their junior year in college. Coaches must balance high school recruiting, evaluating transfer portal talent, and managing scholarship resources alongside NIL opportunities to build competitive rosters.
Georgia has the highest percentage of transfer players in the Southeastern Conference. Despite that, the Bulldogs also have one of the league’s highest player retention rates, which the coaching staff attributes to careful evaluation of both high school and transfer prospects.
Three years ago, Georgia hired head coach Wes Johnson to turn around the program. His staff leaned heavily on the transfer portal to accelerate the rebuild.
“Any time you take over a program that hadn’t done as well as people would want, you want to win right away,” assistant coach Nick Amiratti said. “I think the portal is the easiest way to do that, just because you get age and experience.”
Georgia continues to rely on the transfer portal, bringing in the top transfer portal recruiting class for the 2025-26 season, according to D1Baseball. That said, the coaching staff does not dismiss recruiting players from high school.
“We want the best high school freshmen we can get, and we only have five on our team right now, that we really like,” Amiratti said. “We want to keep them in our program.”
Georgia intentionally signs fewer high school players to avoid cutting large numbers of freshmen before they arrive.
“A lot of kids are going to get cut before they even get to school, and we didn’t want to do that,” Amiratti said.
We don’t want to just sign a bunch of guys, see who ends up being the best, and then cut them right before school.”
Throughout the recruiting process, the staff prioritizes fit as much as talent.
“You’re kind of trying to look for the right fit that will fit into the culture here,” Amiratti said. “Ours is we like to work really hard, do hard things, and we want people to want to come in and get better, compete for championships.”
A key factor in Georgia’s success with the transfer portal is player retention. Once players arrive in Athens, they tend to stay, something the staff emphasizes in recruiting conversations.
“When we’re talking to high school kids, it’s looking at, ‘OK, you might want to go there, but how many of their players go in the portal?’ Whereas, I’m pretty sure we’ve had the lowest or second-lowest number of players in the last three years actually enter the portal,” Amiratti said.
Senior shortstop Kolby Branch transferred from Baylor three years ago and has experienced the process firsthand.
“You grow to love this place,” Branch said. “The people in it, all the fans are amazing, the student body; it’s just a great place and a place I’ll call home forever.”
Phelps has seen the benefits of staying at one school throughout his college career.
“Being able to grow and kind of know what’s expected, especially now with a lot of transfers and the portal, is huge,” Phelps said. He and other longtime players can “tell other guys what the standard is makes it a lot easier to understand what to expect when you’re coming back for another year. It kind of just puts you in a lighter set of shoes.”
Now a leader on the team, Phelps has learned how to navigate constant roster turnover.
“With us, I feel like it’s just how fast you can mesh those personalities and see what each other does well on the field, which is why I think we [scrimmage] intersquad so much — being able to gel very, very fast,” Phelps said.
Georgia fans feel a unique connection to Phelps, who grew up in the state and stayed with the program.
“I feel like the kids, even a lot of the adults, carry a different weight, how a little bit more proud they are of me than, obviously, Kolby (Branch) being a Texan,” Phelps said. “Obviously they are very proud of him too.”
Georgia remains in the college baseball top 10 and leads the nation in home runs. Six Bulldogs have reached double-digit home runs this season; five are transfers, including two newcomers.
The team’s success has boosted attendance, increasing the number of jerseys, balls and hats waiting to be signed after games. Phelps often stays longer than most to make sure young fans leave with an autograph and is frequently one of the last players off the field.
“It’s surreal,” Phelps said. “I remember being in those same shoes, so it’s kind of important to be there for the kids even when things aren’t going my way.”
Meri Gordon is a student in the undergraduate certificate program at the Carmical Sports Media Institute at UGA.
