West Virginia RHP Gavin Van Kempen enters NCAA Transfer Portal

West Virginia right-handed pitcher Gavin Van Kempen has entered the NCAA Transfer Portal. Van Kempen made 14 appearances and 13 starts for the Mountaineers this season, finishing the year with a 6.13 ERA.

In total, Van Kempen pitched for a career-high 39.2 innings, racking up 37 strikeouts compared to 26 walks. He held opposing hitters to a .261 batting average.

Van Kempen spent three years at WVU, amassing 39 appearances and 22 starts. The 6-foot-6 junior didn’t make any appearances on the mound for West Virginia during the NCAA Tournament this season after suffering a shoulder injury in May.

Gavin Van Kempen played high school baseball at Maple Hill (NY). He was the No. 7 overall prospect and No. 3 right-handed pitcher from New York in the 2022 recruiting cycle, according to Perfect Game.

West Virginia had an excellent 2025 campaign, finishing with a 44-16 overall record and a 19-9 mark in conference play. West Virginia won the Clemson Regional despite being a 2-seed.

Alas, the Mountaineers failed to mount another postseason upset when they squared off against LSU in the Baton Rouge Super Regional. West Virginia went 0-2 in the super regional, losing the games by a combined score of 28-14.

Although it wasn’t the ending that West Virginia head coach Steve Sabins had envisioned for his team, he couldn’t have been prouder of the Mountaineers’ season. After all, it was a record-breaking campaign.

“We broke an all-time win record, we won an outright Big 12 title and we played in back-to-back Super Regionals for the first time in program history,” Sabins said after WVU’s season-ending loss to LSU. “In order to do that at a place that doesn’t have the same baseball tradition, it takes incredible fortitude by a group of young men deciding to do something that had never been done in program history before.

“… Our guys competed as hard as they have all season. Last week was as high of a high as this team has probably experienced — actually for certain in the last 10 years that I’ve been here… To go into a regional when we hadn’t been playing very good baseball and sweep a regional against an ACC opponent and two games against a SEC opponent, and trail in all of those games, it was probably the most exciting three-game series in West Virginia baseball history. Sometimes when you come off a high, it’s that exhilarating for young people and when you show up for the next week, it’s difficult to maintain that same level of focus.”