Georgia baseball was a sleeping giant for about a decade. Big school, SEC footprint, all the resources in the world, and a program that mostly existed to feed Vanderbilt and LSU some conference wins. Then Wes Johnson showed up. And right now in the SEC Championship, the Dawgs are absolutely housing Arkansas.
Mintzy's read on what this game looks like in real time.
Georgia is making Arkansas look like a D3 team. #SECChampionship
The Wes Johnson story is the kind of arc you don't really see in college baseball anymore. Dude was the pitching coach for the Minnesota Twins — an actual MLB job — and bounced to go coach Paul Skenes at LSU in 2023. That worked out fine (Skenes turned into the best pitcher on the planet and LSU won a national title). Then Georgia handed him the keys, and in 3 years he's turned a dormant program into the SEC Champion. Hats off is right.
The rundown on how Johnson got from the Twins dugout to running Athens.
Georgia Coach Wes Johnson on a historic run. He was the Twins pitching coach & left pro job to be Paul Skenes pitching coach at LSU in 2023. Wins a natty then has turned a sleeping giant in Georgia into SEC Champion in 3 short years. Hats off
The vibes in this one have officially crossed into Major League territory. With Georgia already running away with it, an Arkansas pitcher uncorked a 98 mph fastball directly into Trey Phelps' jersey letters. The kind of pitch you throw when the scoreboard has long since stopped being your friend and you just want to send a message into the void.
The Bob Uecker comp for the HBP that summed up Arkansas' night.
Ark pitcher just threw a 98 mph fastball off Georgia Star Trey Phelps letters on his jersey. Reminds me of the late great Bob Uecker in Major League “Bout Time it’s 8-1!” #SECChampionship
It's a strange thing to watch Arkansas — a program that's been a national contender for years under Dave Van Horn — get treated like batting practice on the biggest stage the SEC offers. But that's what Georgia is doing. The pipeline Johnson built is real, the arms are filthy, and the rest of the league has been put on notice. Omaha is going to be a problem.
Pure unfiltered joy at how this whole thing has gone.