BLACKSBURG \u2014 Virginia Tech baseball coach John Szefc is no longer entering the final season of his contract.<\/p>\n
Virginia Tech announced Wednesday that Szefc has agreed to a three-year extension that will keep him under contract through the 2030 season. Szefc’s contract was due to expire after the 2027 season.<\/p>\n
Under the new deal, Szefc will automatically get a one-year extension every time Tech makes the NCAA tournament.<\/p>\n
Szefc, who is entering his 10th season at the helm of the Hokies, steered Tech to 31 wins and an NCAA tournament berth last season. His Hokies advanced to the NCAA Super Regionals in 2022.<\/p>\n
Szefc agreed to a six-year contract when he left Maryland to take Tech’s reins in June 2017. In July 2021, he received a four-year extension that kept him under contract through June 2027.<\/p>\n
Szefc’s annual base salary under the new deal is $500,000.<\/p>\n
He also will reap $275,000 in supplemental pay this school year, with that sum increasing to $315,000 in 2027-28; $355,000 in 2028-29; and $400,000 in 2029-30.<\/p>\n
Szefc will receive a $50,000 retention bonus if he is still at Tech in July 2027, with $50,000 bonuses also coming if he is still at Tech in July 2028, July 2029 and June 30, 2030.<\/p>\n
The salary pool for assistant coaches and staff members will be $760,000 for this school year. That sum will gradually increase to $860,000 for the 2029-30 school year.<\/p>\n
Szefc’s Hokies began fall practice on Sept. 9.<\/p>\n
“The fall is really important to evaluate what you have, identify what you need to work on,” Szefc said Monday when he met with the media to discuss how his team has been looking this fall.<\/p>\n
The Hokies will be playing three exhibition games this fall, including one against rival Virginia at 4 p.m. Saturday in Fredericksburg at Virginia Credit Union Stadium, which is the home of the Class A Fredericksburg Nationals.<\/p>\n
Because of the ACC’s current baseball scheduling format, Virginia Tech and UVa won’t be playing an ACC series against each other in the 2027 season. So Szefc said the teams will instead play a nonconference regular-season game against each other in March 2027. Szefc hopes that game can be held in Washington, D.C., at Nationals Park \u2014 the home of the Washington Nationals.<\/p>\n
This will be the first spring since 2005 that Tech and UVa won’t square off in an ACC series.<\/p>\n
Virginia Tech and UVa play an ACC game against each other in football every year and play two ACC games against each other in men’s basketball every year. But there are no such permanent opponents in ACC baseball.<\/p>\n
Under the current scheduling format, ACC baseball teams play only 10 of their 15 ACC rivals each season. Over the course of a three-year ACC scheduling cycle, each school will face every other ACC school once in a home series and once in a road series \u2014 and there will be one year in the cycle where the teams don’t meet at all in an ACC series. The 2027 season is the year in the cycle when Tech does not have an ACC series with UVa.<\/p>\n
The Hokies return six of the nine regulars from last season’s batting order \u2014 Ethan Ball, Ethan Gibson, Pete Daniel, Hudson Lutterman, Sam Grube and Nick Locurto. The other three regulars from last season no longer have any eligibility.<\/p>\n
“Some of our best guys from last year have returned,” Szefc said.<\/p>\n
Szefc is glad he did not lose Ball to the transfer portal. Ball was named a second-team Freshman All-American last season, when he hit 17 homers.<\/p>\n
“He could’ve (entered the portal and) gone other places \u2014 just like other guys could’ve, too,” Szefc said.<\/p>\n
Did Szefc have more NIL money to help him retain players this year than he did in recent years?<\/p>\n
“Not really,” Szefc said. “Down the road that might be the case.”<\/p>\n
Szefc has 22 full scholarships to pass out this season, up from 17 last season. That increase was set when Whit Babcock was the athletic director; that new total of 22 grants remained the same after Brian White replaced Babcock in June.<\/p>\n
The NCAA maximum for baseball scholarships is 34.<\/p>\n
White said in Wednesday’s news release about Szefc’s contract extension that Tech is “committed to generating the resources necessary to support John\u2019s vision and position this program to compete for championships.”<\/p>\n
Szefc also has retained shortstop Clay Grady, who did not play last season because of an injury. But Grady won’t be playing this fall because he is recovering from shoulder surgery.<\/p>\n
Pitchers Logan Eisenreich, Ethan Grim and Danny Lazaro also are back.<\/p>\n
But pitchers Brett Renfrow, Griffin Stieg, Luke Craytor and Madden Clement were snatched up in the Major League Baseball draft. Pitchers Preston Crowl (North Carolina), Chase Swift (Miami) and Austin Dean (Iowa) were lost to the transfer portal. Pitcher Aiden Robertson did not return to Tech, either.<\/p>\n
But Szefc isn’t fretting.<\/p>\n
“We have some really good guys on that staff that people \u2026 don’t know who they are yet, but they will,” he said. “Our staff will be fine.<\/p>\n
“In 2022 we had zero returning ACC starts on that staff. \u2026 But we won 45 games that year. And this staff is far more talented than that one was.”<\/p>\n
Newcomers to the staff include Kennesaw State transfer Daniel Powell; Tennessee transfer Nic Abraham; Charlotte transfer AJ Camp; and freshmen Alex Hoffman and Dax Hammett.<\/p>\n
Another newcomer of note is catcher Caleb Strawhecker, who hit .344 for NCAA Division II power West Chester last season.<\/p>\n
“He’s an advanced defender,” Szefc said. “I grew up watching a lot of (New York) Yankee games. I said, ‘You look a lot like (ex-Yankees catcher Joe) Girardi as a defender.\u2019 And of course he didn’t know who Girardi was.”<\/p>\n
Outfielder Brantley Truitt, who hit .279 for UNC Greensboro last season, is another newcomer of note.<\/p>\n
Another newcomer of note is Szefc’s son John Michael Szefc, a freshman infielder who played for ex-Ferrum great Billy Wagner at The Miller School in Albemarle County.<\/p>\n
What is it like for Szefc to have a son on the team?<\/p>\n
“I’ve had more interactions with him when he was playing for Billy Wagner \u2026 then now, just because I’ve tried to kind of back away \u2026 and let him do his own thing and try to figure some things out,” the coach said. “I had a scout tell me, \u2018It’s going to be harder for him than it’s going to be for you.\u2019<\/p>\n
“For me, it’s been fun.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BLACKSBURG \u2014 Virginia Tech baseball coach John Szefc is no longer entering the final season of his contract.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":819668,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2289],"tags":[5,81007,1693,648,1694,2341,185,1568],"class_list":["post-819667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-college-baseball","tag-baseball","tag-bridgewater","tag-college","tag-college-baseball","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-baseball","tag-sports","tag-virginia"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/117370973267279238","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819667","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=819667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819667\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/819668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=819667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=819667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=819667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}