Georgia lands FSU catcher Hunter Carns from portal
Georgia landed its sixth transfer portal addition after Florida State sophomore catcher Hunter Carns announced his commitment on Friday.
With Daniel Jackson and Brennan Hudson departing for the draft, Georgia’s only returning catcher for next season would be Jack Arcamone. So adding Carns not only builds depth at a key position, but also adds another solid bat to the lineup.
Carns spent two seasons with the Seminoles, serving as the primary catcher. He appeared in 83 games, making 61 starts behind the plate. During that span, the Jacksonville, Florida, native slashed a career .288/.401/.427 with 118 hits, 19 doubles, 12 homers and 53 RBIs.
Entering the 2026 campaign, Carns ranked as the 27th overall catcher, according to D1Baseball. Across 43 games played — 31 starts catching — Carns slashed .289/.411/.401 with 80 hits, 11 doubles, six home runs, and drew 60 walks in 49 games this season.
Defensively, he posted a .989 fielding percentage over 368 chances and threw out 24% of his base runners stealing (8-for-34).
Before attending Florida State, Carns was drafted in the 20th round of the 2024 MLB draft by the Arizona Diamondbacks, but chose to play for the Seminoles instead. Before that, Carns attended First Coast High School, where he hit .384 with 28 hits, seven doubles, 27 runs scored, 16 RBIs and seven home runs as a senior.
While Carns shows plus-power from the right side of the plate while also showing rare athleticism behind the plate, the 6-foot, 200-pound catcher does need to cut back on the strikeouts. Over his two years in Tallahassee, he racked up 103 strikeouts and walked just 77 times.
But the soon-to-be junior will now head to his new home in Athens, where he hopes to become the next catcher to develop into an impactful member of the team.
That list would include Jackson, Hudson, Arcamone and Henry Hunter — all who transferred to Georgia since Wes Johnson took over as head coach in 2024.
“You just continue to understand and obviously recruit. And then the development of guys. I mean, Daniel Jackson wasn’t on people’s radar this year, and he just swept every award that you can get if you’re a catcher,” Johnson said on June 18. “So the development piece for us will always be the forefront of what we do. And we’ll continue to build on that foundation.
“But we’ve got a pretty — our model is very, very detailed, I guess, is what I would say, and we know what we’re looking for. It’s not always the name or where they were or where they played.”