Amid all of the roster turnover that the Kansas baseball team endured this offseason, KU always had a foundational piece in the fold in pitcher Dominic Voegele.
The question, entering his third collegiate season, is whether the Jayhawks’ ace can retain the form that earned him Big 12 freshman of the year honors in 2024.
In his first year out of Columbia, Illinois, Voegele dazzled with a 3.89 ERA and 80 strikeouts to 29 walks in 15 starts, which was enough to make him the conference’s preseason pitcher of the year entering his sophomore season. But he endured an uneven second campaign in Lawrence, which featured several vintage dominant outings — Baylor, Oklahoma State, UCF, Utah, West Virginia — but also 36 walks and 15 home runs allowed, and seven earned runs conceded in 5 1/3 innings in KU’s postseason loss to Creighton.
As Voegele enters his first season as a draft-eligible prospect, head coach Dan Fitzgerald said he “looks better than he ever has.”
“I think he needed some time off,” Fitzgerald told the Journal-World in a recent interview, “and he looks absolutely incredible.”
A big part of that is his work with pitching coach Brandon Scott and Director of Player Development Ryan Holland to add new pitches to his arsenal. (That was also a key storyline last offseason, as Voegele attempted to work on a changeup that if he got it right, he said, could result in “the biggest jump I’ve ever taken with my baseball career.”)
“If you look at big leaguers right now, (Pirates star pitcher) Paul Skenes throws like seven pitches,” Fitzgerald said. “These guys all throw a four-seamer, all throw a two-seamer, all throw something that cuts, they all throw some form of a changeup, (it) seems like more and more splits are back. So Dom has taken a jump for sure.”
Beyond Voegele, KU went into the offseason with some openings in the rest of its rotation, particularly after Cooper Moore, a reliable Saturday starter last season, transferred to LSU and Alex Breckheimer, a closer whom Fitzgerald had hoped to develop into a starter, got drafted by the St. Louis Cardinals.
The addition of Mason Cook has bolstered the group significantly. A sophomore out of McLennan Community College, Cook struck out 54 batters with a 4.68 ERA in his lone JUCO year before committing to KU in June. Fitzgerald said he too has been “incredible” and put himself in position for a rotation spot.
Returner Kannon Carr is another prime contender after a year in which he rarely cruised through any given outing but also only allowed more than three earned runs once and largely served as KU’s Sunday starter.
Fitzgerald said there was a lot of uncertainty around Carr’s usage during the 2025 season because KU kept expecting to have to stretch him out as a long-relief option on Friday nights after Voegele, only for Voegele to eat up so many innings that the Jayhawks could go straight from him to Breckheimer. In the end, the JUCO transfer from Poplar Bluff, Missouri, started in 10 of his 18 appearances on the year with a 4.42 ERA.
“Kannon has been great, and I think at this point has proven like, no, he’s still one of our top guys in the fight for a rotation spot,” Fitzgerald said.
Voegele, Cook and Carr all ranked among KU’s statistical leaders in a post by the Kansas Baseball Data X account on Monday. Voegele paced the Jayhawks in strike percentage and whiff percentage, Cook led the way in ERA (shared with Boede Rahe) and Cook and Carr shared the lead in strikeouts. Carr also had the best xFIP, a metric that measures pitchers’ effectiveness independent of fielding (and adjusts for how many home runs they would be expected to give up as opposed to how many fly balls actually turned into home runs).
The last contender Fitzgerald cited by name as an option for the rotation was Daniel Lopez. One of the more interesting stories of KU’s offseason, Lopez was picked in the 12th round of the MLB Draft by the Baltimore Orioles as a freshman out of Odessa College in July. But he spurned the pros for the Jayhawks, and now KU could get him for two years before he becomes eligible for the draft again.
That recruitment dated back to April and began with the persuasion of recruiting coordinator Jon Coyne.
“We were at UCF, I was in the hotel, and Jon was convincing me that Daniel Lopez had the best changeup in college baseball, and that he was a freshman in Odessa, and that we could get him,” Fitzgerald recalled. “And I just remember thinking, like, there are 1,000 schools between here and Odessa, Texas, and he’s a freshman, and there were multiple things around, like, this seems like a really long road. And there’s a reason that Jon Coyne is the best of the best.”
Getting Lopez was a “slow and steady” process that included Coyne and Scott visiting Lopez and his family in his hometown of El Paso, Texas, after the draft, but also meticulous planning on Coyne’s part to ensure KU could reel Lopez in.
“Jon’s wrong on a lot of stuff — he was 100% right on every single piece of this,” Fitzgerald said. “Like he said, you know, ‘This is his number. This is the Orioles’ pool. If this guy signs, you know, this lowers the pool to this.’ And Jon mapped it out. I mean, he could have written an article on the exact steps in terms of how it was going to play out, and it played out exactly that way.”
The young sophomore has experienced a bit of a learning curve since making the move to Division I. Fitzgerald said that facing KU’s top hitters in practice is “a whole lot different than a fall game at Odessa junior college.”
“So I think it’s baptism by fire a little bit, but Daniel Lopez is certainly, certainly going to be a monster piece for us,” Fitzgerald said.
Lopez struck out two in a scoreless inning against Bradley on Oct. 11. The Jayhawks will return to the field for their next fall game against Kansas State on Friday at 3 p.m.
Kansas pitcher Mason Cook is pictured during a fall baseball game against Bradley on Saturday, Oct. 11, 2025, in Lawrence.
Kansas pitcher Kannon Carr pitches during a fall baseball game against Bradley on Saturday, Oct. 11, 2025, in Lawrence.
Kansas pitcher Daniel Lopez is pictured during a fall baseball game against Bradley on Saturday, Oct. 11, 2025, in Lawrence.
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Arun Halder/Kansas Athletics
Kansas Athletics