The top-ranked catcher in the Draft wouldn't even be a backstop if not for a text from dad

Sometimes, one text can change the future.

Back home in Suwanee, Georgia – a little more than 30 miles northeast of Atlanta – Vahn Lackey was a young third baseman on a Little League team that was using a left-handed thrower as a catcher, something that hasn’t been done in the Major Leagues since Benny Distefano donned the tools of ignorance for the Pirates in 1989. The parental group chat exploded out of a concern that the team couldn’t veer too far from standard baseball practices, even at such a young age.

That’s when Lackey’s father sent a message that changed his son’s trajectory.

“My dad was like, ‘Yeah, Vahn can catch,’” Lackey told MLB Network’s Mark DeRosa. “I didn’t even know if I could catch. ... [Fellow Suwanee native] Nasim Nuñez from the Nationals, at least this is what my dad tells me, he brought me to the cages and was basically just chucking balls at me with gear on.

“That's how, I guess, I started catching.”

Flash forward to July 2026, and as MLB Pipeline’s No. 3 Draft prospect, Lackey isn’t just set to become the first catcher off the board this weekend; the Georgia Tech star could be the fourth backstop to go first overall since 2001.

The words “late bloomer” come up a lot when discussing Lackey leading up to the 2026 Draft. Ranked as just the No. 16 catcher in the state of Georgia by Perfect Game coming out of high school, the right-handed slugger didn’t get a ton of playing time with the Yellow Jackets out of the gate as a freshman in 2024, receiving only 103 plate appearances over 36 games. He hit .214/.330/.381 with four homers in that span, though he did start behind the plate for five of Tech’s six postseason games.

Lackey headed to the Traverse City Pit Spitters in the Northwoods League in the summer of ‘24 and picked up 176 more plate appearances. Even with just a .196 average and .640 OPS in that span, it was all about getting the much-needed experience he required to set him up for a breakout sophomore year.

“[The team] played 72 games, and I mean, I'm just seeing so many pitches,” Lackey said. “I'm working out every day, basically just working on my swing every day. Even when I wasn't doing the best in the Northwoods, I was still seeing pitches and just stacking up the days.”

Back at The Flats for his sophomore campaign, Lackey certainly looked more seasoned at the plate in 2025 with a .347/.421/.500 line, six homers and 18 steals in 60 games in ‘25, earning All-ACC Second Team honors along the way. That set him up for a much different summer with spots on the USA Baseball Collegiate National Team – with which he made three starts and hit an inside-the-park home run over a five-game series in Japan in July – and the prestigious Cape Cod League.

But still not one to rest on the laurels of increased exposure to high-end competition, Lackey got back in the lab before his junior season this spring ... literally. He spent time with Maven Baseball Lab in Atlanta during the offseason, trying to understand his own mechanics and what he could still unlock to take his hitting ability to yet another, yet unforeseen level.

“I'm a big visual kind of guy, like I like seeing things down on an iPad or a video,” Lackey said. “Maven brought that to me. I feel like I definitely learned a lot from that experience of learning my swing. The confidence built sophomore year. Then I really built a nice little approach and actually saw the ball deeper this year, and I was starting to get the ball up in the air a little bit more.”

True enough, Lackey raised his flyball rate from 33.3 percent as a sophomore to 39.3 as a junior, all the while trimming his groundball percentage from 46 to 43.2. He was also squaring the ball up with only 2.2 percent of his flyballs resulting in infield popups while 21.7 percent of them headed over the fence.

The results were a .397/.519/.772 line, 20 homers and a 38/50 K/BB ratio over 61 games. His .772 slugging percentage tied Mark Teixeira’s same mark in 2000 for the second-highest among Georgia Tech hitters this century; only Drew Burress’ .821 SLG in 2024 was higher.

That trendline is a huge part of what makes Lackey so enticing to pro organizations as a Draft prospect. There’s a feeling across the industry that the backstop, who just turned 21 on Tuesday, is only beginning to crack into his offensive tools. Given what he’s already shown, there’s the potential for plus hit and plus power by the time he reaches the Majors, and that’s immensely valuable at the premium position of catcher, especially when Lackey grades out well defensively as a receiver, blocker and thrower behind the plate.

Had he stuck at third base – that is to say, had his father not volunteered him for catching in Little League – there’s a likely case that Lackey would be talked more like a Top 10 pick than a Top 3 one. Instead, the man who wore “Catcher U” on his Yellow Jackets chest protector is set to follow in the long line of Tech catchers like Jason Varitek, Matt Wieters and Joey Bart.

All that’s left is the message on where exactly he’ll head in the first round on Saturday. Except that one might be a phone call instead of a text.

“You’re going to see me and want to get a little better,” Lackey said. “That's what I want to set.”