Tennessee baseball landed its fourth commit in the transfer portal over the weekend when UC Irvine pitcher Ricky Ojeda committed to the Vols a few days after completing an official visit to Tennessee.
The official visit allowed Ojeda to get to know new Tennessee pitching coach Austin Knight who impressed Ojeda with his detailed plan on how he could improve in his senior season at Tennessee.
“He gave me a little PowerPoint over kind of what we would do there at Tennessee in order for like development over the next year, and me and him were on the same page,” Ojeda told RTI. “ Like, he pointed out flaws that I knew about myself, and then he also had a way of how he would go about helping me with those. So I thought that was pretty cool.”
Those areas of potential improvement included command of his secondary pitches, throwing his slider harder and getting his arm extension back to where it was earlier in his career. The detail and the simplicity of Knight’s plan for developing Ojeda separated Tennessee from other schools that pursued the UC Irvine transfer.
“It was a little unique because I mean, the other coaches definitely had analytical data of it and stuff like that,” Ojeda said. “ But he was able to tell it to me in like a PowerPoint presentation kind of with like video and stuff that I was like impressed with and it was easy for me to understand. So I feel like if he’s already making it easy for me to understand, it’d definitely be easy for me to understand when I’m actually working with him throughout the next year.”
Ojeda didn’t just have to take Knight at his word either, doing additional research on his own with a unique resource. Ojeda played with East Carolina pitcher Ethan Norby on the USA Baseball Collegiate Team last summer.
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Norby gave a glowing endorsement of Knight while also getting Ojeda in touch with other pitchers who worked with Knight at East Carolina.
“They said that they all like loved him like he was a really cool person,” Ojeda said. “ They all had like a great relationship with him. I thought that was really cool hearing for someone else.”
Ojeda is coming off a strong junior season where he posted a 3-3 record, 3.77 ERA and 1.13 WHIP in 62 innings pitched. The Anteaters used Ojeda as both a starter and reliever. He made seven starts and 11 relief appearances during the 2026 season.
The California native was a bullpen pitcher in his first two college seasons, combining for a 3.51 ERA in 118 total innings pitched. He throws a fastball that sits 91-93 mph and tops at 96 mph as well as a slider, curveball and a changeup.
Ojeda comes to Tennessee with a chance to prove himself against the best in college basketball and improve his draft stock in his final college season.
“I just want to put my name out there, make sure, like there’s no doubt that this guy’s ready to play pro ball,” Ojeda said. “He’s ready to be up there and not just, like, make it to the bigs, but stay in the big. So I think that’s that’s my, that’s what I’m working for next year is like, I’m ready. I’m going there to get better and play for a school that I’ve kind of always wanted to go to.”
