WVU baseball has been slowly rebuilding their pitching staff with elite talent from the small college ranks.
After a successful experiment with Quincy (Ill.) transfer Griffin Kirn, who turned into the Mountaineers' ace on the mound this season, Steve Sabins and the WVU coaching staff has decided to repeat the experiment -- with a few different pitchers.
The Mountaineers have already added top-level Division 2 talents on the mound with Newberry's Chansen Cole and Seton Hill's Ian Korn -- the latter being the 2025 National Pitcher of the Year at the D2 level. Now, WVU has signed Adelphi University pitcher Dawson Montesa, who earned All-American honors and was named the Division 2 East Region Pitcher of the Year by multiple outlets.
Montesa pitched 72.1 innings in 2025, recording a program record 105 strikeouts and eight wins while recording a 1.99 ERA. He finished the campaign fifth among Division 2 pitchers in strikeouts, and struck out a career-high 17 batters in one game against a Top 25 program in Bentley College. Montesa struckout 10 or more batters in five different appearances the mound, and also earned First-Team All-Northeast 10 (NE10) honors for his performance on the season.
The Glendale, New York native will enter the program with two seasons of eligibility remaining. Montesa, as well as Cole and Korn, will join a transfer pitching class that also includes a trio of Division 1 additions in FIU's Owen Puk, Hawaii's Joshua Surigao, and Tennessee's Bryson Thacker. In total, the Mountaineers have made 12 additions to the 2026 roster from the transfer portal.