CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (KCRG) – Vahn Lackey, the Minnesota Twins\u2019 first-round pick and third overall selection in this year\u2019s Major League Baseball draft, has posted a batting average of .556 through his first three games with the Cedar Rapids Kernels.<\/p>\n
Lackey did not start playing baseball until he was about 11 years old. On his first Little League team, he was not playing catcher until one moment changed that.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had a lefty catcher on our team. The parents group chat was complaining about how we had a lefty catcher. My dad said, \u2018Vahn can catch.\u2019 That\u2019s how I started catching,\u201d Lackey said.<\/p>\n
Path to Georgia Tech<\/p>\n
No Division I school offered Lackey until his senior year of high school. He committed to Georgia Tech and started less than half of his team\u2019s games during his freshman year.<\/p>\n
\u201cI came into college and I was failing again. I was just frustrated with failing again. I went to the Northwoods League, and I learned how to fail. I learned that a lot of things weren\u2019t internal. Like, it wasn\u2019t my swing. It was just me competing in the moment. I made that switch from my freshman to sophomore year,\u201d Lackey said.<\/p>\n
Turnaround as a sophomore<\/p>\n
As a sophomore, Lackey started every game. His batting average rose from .214 to .347. He began tracking as a top prospect.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe had to work for it. Not having a good freshman year, maybe that opened his eyes. In today\u2019s college world, you may look at some kids who transfer. Vahn\u2019s a case of persistence, where he put in the work, and really took advantage of the opportunities that he was given at Georgia Tech,\u201d Kernels manager Brian Meyer said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI document all of my swings on my phone. It\u2019s kind of like seeing your progress at every step and at every level. Seeing the changes you\u2019ve made. You can see the changes you\u2019ve made mentally too. So it\u2019s really cool to see the progress,\u201d Lackey said.<\/p>\n
Lackey will look to ascend quickly to the majors.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 KCRG. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (KCRG) – Vahn Lackey, the Minnesota Twins\u2019 first-round pick and third overall selection in this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":792013,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2388],"tags":[5,69236,65926,822,60,3190,6522,4,185,148,54483],"class_list":["post-792012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-minnesota-twins","tag-baseball","tag-cedar-rapids","tag-kernels","tag-minnesota","tag-minnesota-twins","tag-minnesotatwins","tag-minor-league","tag-mlb","tag-sports","tag-twins","tag-vahn-lackey"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/117182630802240283","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=792012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792012\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/792013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=792012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=792012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=792012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}