The two most recent Kansas baseball rosters, which produced two of the best seasons in program history, consisted largely of newcomers, with minimal continuity from the prior year.
KU head coach Dan Fitzgerald, now the reigning back-to-back Big 12 coach of the year, is used to assembling teams that fit that sort of model, but the 2027 season should be quite a bit different: The Jayhawks will actually have a number of key returning players at their disposal.
Second baseman Cade Baldridge (second-team all-conference), catcher Augusto Mungarrieta, closer Boede Rahe (first-team all-conference) and third baseman Dylan Schlotterback are all back in Lawrence after going unselected in the 2026 MLB Draft.
Those three position players were consistent starters for the Jayhawks as they reached the super-regional round last spring, as was outfielder Tyson Owens, who is back for his junior year. Throw in fellow juniors Mason Cook and Riane Ritter, who have a good chance to comprise two thirds of the starting rotation, plus fifth-year righty Manning West, and the cupboard isn’t exactly bare for this year’s team.
“It’s a huge deal when you look at the lineup and think about the guys that are back and what they did for us last year,” Fitzgerald said on Monday. “I think there’s a leadership component that we have last year that’s maybe a little different than what we’ve had in the past.”
That doesn’t necessarily mean that newcomers won’t step up to lead the way as they often have during Fitzgerald’s four-year tenure, but, he added, “I think it’s nice having to not start from scratch, in terms of those guys can show the new guys how things are done, I think, in a way that is more tangible than us telling them how to do it if that makes sense.”
There were some holes that KU needed to fill on its 2027 roster, even though not every draft-eligible player had the chance to turn pro. For example, Fitzgerald mentioned that even with Mungarrieta sticking around, Gavyn Schlotterback coming back after a redshirt year following heart surgery and Holden Groebl arriving from Cowley College, KU still knew it would need to add late at catcher. The Jayhawks did indeed get Jake Overstreet from Weatherford College.
Then, with Dominic Voegele and Mathis Nayral both signing professional deals, their attention also turned to the mound.
“Pitching was the main thing, just starting innings,” Fitzgerald said. “Dom was such a rock for us for the past three years in the rotation that replacing his innings and a couple of those other guys were kind of the major, major focus.”
In that category, in the lead-up to the draft, KU added Grady Hoke (a starter) and Riley Lile (a reliever) from Cowley College, as well as high school pitcher Chase Rhodes, who had previously been set to attend John A. Logan College. Shortly after it concluded, the Jayhawks also brought in Ben Couvreur, who like Nayral is a Frenchman from Cochise College.
These additions came on top of the rest of the Jayhawks’ class, which included the top-rated set of junior-college additions in the country as assessed by The JBB. Now they are all in town with practice underway.
“It’s a really quick offseason, and I think we put another really good team together,” Fitzgerald said. “I like the guys, I like the talent, I think it’s a question mark of who we’ll become as a team. What’s marked our program the last two years, really, is the team that they’ve become, the type of teammates that they’ve become. And so we’re in the early process of that, but it’s fun to be back at it.”
KU will host Illinois State in a fall exhibition game on Saturday. First pitch is set for 4 p.m.
“You want to see who’s on their ascent, who competes, who’s a great teammate and really try to figure out who we are as a team,” Fitzgerald said of the fall.
