How the Kansas Jayhawks became college baseball’s unlikeliest powerhouse

THE UNLIKELIEST POWERHOUSE in college baseball encompasses a lineup with eight junior college transfers and a ninth from Division II Minnesota Crookston. When Dan Fitzgerald arrived at the University of Kansas three years in the past to take over a program outlined by its perpetual mediocrity, he didn’t intend to construct round the neglected and underappreciated. It simply got here naturally.

From 2012 to 2016, when Fitzgerald was serving to flip Dallas Baptist into an implausible winner as recruiting coordinator, he known as Jon Coyne each Monday between lunch along with his spouse and selecting up his children at college. Coyne was a Texas juco assistant throughout that point, and the conversations with Fitzgerald have been data tsunamis, with Coyne a supply of data on the state of two-year college ball in Texas.

Fitzgerald, sooner than most, noticed the coming evolution of baseball with readability. Pitchers have been throwing tougher, and hitters wanted physicality and maturity to maintain tempo, and as tantalizing as the concept of ​​bringing in uncooked freshmen and growing them into productive upperclassmen was to Fitzgerald, profitable now sounded higher. It’s a philosophy that has rooted itself as a lot at KU because it did at DBU. There is nothing flashy about the Jayhawks, aside from the shine coming off their Big 12 regular-season championship trophy.

FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE 1949!!!!!

KU BASEBALL WINS A REGULAR SEASON CONFERENCE CHAMPIONSHIP 🏆 pic.twitter.com/dVcoYjp1b2

— Kansas Baseball (@KUBaseball) May 16, 2026

In a universe of seven-figure NIL offers, KU is the merriest band of juco bandits in college baseball. Of the staff’s 34 gamers, 23 have performed junior college ball. Survivors of 10-hour bus rides, armed with tales of cricket-filled sinks and the different joys juco ball brings, the Jayhawks enter the Big 12 event this week (Thursday at 3:30 pm ET, ESPNU) recent off the college’s first convention title since 1949, making an attempt to host an NCAA regional for the first time in program historical past.

The turnaround coincided with the arrival of Fitzgerald and his subsequent hiring of Coyne as recruiting coordinator to modernize a dusty program. Within months of coming to Lawrence in June 2022, they’d booked the No. 1-ranked juco recruiting class in the nation, in response to Perfect Game. They did it once more in 2023. And 2024. And as soon as extra final 12 months. And now it’s manifesting itself in a means lengthy thought of unattainable in Lawrence.

“All we do is get up and think about where we can find good players and how we coach them,” Fitzgerald mentioned. “So if there’s anything else in life that is needed of us — like, need me to hang something on the wall — probably not going to happen. Certainly can’t wire anything electrically. This is literally all we do.”

What they do is completely different from each Power 4 staff in the nation — and, primarily based on Fitzgerald’s background, not totally shocking. Juco ball holds a particular place in Fitzgerald’s coronary heart. His first full-time teaching job was as an assistant at North Iowa Area Community College in 2003. He moved to Division II Flagler, the place he spent two seasons earlier than becoming a member of Des Moines Area Community College in 2007. He was named head coach a 12 months after that and went 249-73 over the subsequent 5 seasons.

Dallas Baptist marked his first foray into Division I, and there he caught the eye of Jay Johnson, who two weeks after taking up as head coach at LSU in June 2021 poached Fitzgerald from DBU as his recruiting coordinator. Fitzgerald’s first group of commitments was headlined by Konnor Griffinwho at the moment is beginning shortstop for the Pittsburgh Pirates in what would have been his junior 12 months in college. Between DBU and LSU, Fitzgerald’s persuasiveness earned him a repute as college baseball’s Mariano Rivera-caliber nearer.

Replicating that at Kansas was a wholly completely different story. Power 4 groups traditionally haven’t constructed their rosters round juco gamers, sometimes signing one or two a 12 months. With a restricted NIL price range and services that do not stack as much as what different top-tier groups provide, Kansas would zag the place everybody else zigged. Fitzgerald understood that solely particular kinds of freshmen warrant vital taking part in time, so if he wished to win, he would lean into extra mature gamers that prioritized at-bats and innings and profitable over cash and perks.

It’s how, final 12 months, he landed first baseman Brady Ballinger. Unrecruited out of a Las Vegas highschool, Ballinger enrolled at the College of Southern Nevada, he mentioned, as a result of “it was that or go to a trade school.” Kansas was the solely staff to significantly court docket Ballinger, seeing swing tweaks that may unlock his manufacturing. Almost instantly Kansas coaches requested the 6-foot-2, 225-pound Ballinger to maneuver his hand place and add a leg kick to enhance his timing, then begin attempting to hit the ball in the air extra. In 58 video games as the Jayhawks’ first baseman final 12 months, Ballinger hit .353/.490/.670 with 16 dwelling runs, 56 RBIs and 71 runs, and at the moment he serves as Kansas’ cleanup hitter.

“Fitz is really good at bringing guys in and on Day 1 he’s going to tell you exactly what he’s going to expect of you,” Ballinger mentioned. “There’s no surprises. Everything’s pretty upfront: ‘Here’s what’s going to happen, here’s how everything’s going to go and you’re either on board or we’re going to leave you behind.’ And his coaching style really helps with juco players just trying to acclimate.”

KU turning into a haven for the finest juco gamers is smart contemplating the success of two-year faculties in the state. Johnson County Community College has been the finest juco staff in the nation this season, profitable 41 video games in a row at one level. Dozens of gamers in the Kansas Jayhawk Community College Conference are set to play Division I ball subsequent 12 months — together with Cowley County catcher Holden Groebl at Kansas.

Fitzgerald and Coyne do not restrict their juco recruiting to a small radius, after all. They often land gamers from legacy juco applications corresponding to LSU Eunice, from which they plucked their leadoff hitter and finest participant this season, shortstop Tyson LeBlanc. The depth of Coyne’s investigation into the gamers he recruits runs deep, and he obtained a leg up on others by avoiding a typical mistake: mispronouncing LeBlanc’s final title. (It is pronounced Luh-BLAHn, with the C silent and the N smooth.) LeBlanc seen. He additionally seen that KU gathered video and player-tracking information and used it to offer a complete evaluation of his sport, together with a participant comparability to former San Diego Padres shortstop Khalil Greene, whose power-first sport certainly resembles LeBlanc’s.

He dedicated quickly after his in-person go to, abandoning Eunice, the place, he mentioned, “the baseball field is paradise and then the outskirts are crawfish fields, drive-through daiquiri shops and Walmart. We have a Tractor Supply. One Mexican restaurant that’s the hotspot. If you’ve got 10 bucks in your bank account, that’s where you’re spending your 10 bucks.” Lawrence felt like Valhalla comparatively.

And that, as a lot as something, is what Fitzgerald and Coyne love about juco gamers. It’s not simply that they are appreciative of the facilities. It’s that they’ve confirmed they will excel in attempting conditions. At Eunice, LeBlanc mentioned, the staff did not have an athletic coach their freshman 12 months, so gamers did their very own cupping remedy and electrical nerve stimulation. There’s a degree of self-sufficiency and goal with them serving to to minimize the stigma greater applications have with juco transfers.

It’s how a staff that was picked to complete fifth in the Big 12 and does not essentially have the statistics of a first-place unit wins a championship. Other applications can go wild in the switch portal. Kansas will fortunately do what it is aware of finest and preserve profitable.

Successful compounds in college baseball, particularly when the foundational gamers discover themselves in skilled ball. LeBlanc and Ballinger are anticipated to be drafted this July. Others may very well be as properly. And constant years of drafted gamers take the penciling of a story — a program on the upswing — and etch it in ink.

It’s beginning to dry now, to lock firmly in KU as a power to be reckoned with in college baseball. Like UConn has accomplished with Division III standouts, the Jayhawks’ id is rooted of their willingness to tread the place different applications are too proud or pompous. It’s a system, and it really works, and by now Kansas is aware of navigate the potential pitfalls.

“Everyone on your team is all of a sudden good when you get to a level like the Big 12 where you look up and say, ‘Holy buckets, every at-bat that I have in the fall is against the best guy that I faced last year,'” Fitzgerald mentioned. “When you do that, you really start to get an appreciation for how many good baseball players there are.”

There are loads. The finest get drafted out of highschool. The tier after that commits in hopes of forging that very same path three years down the highway. And then there are the 99.9%, the 1000’s who’ve excellence inside and easily take a extra tortuous path to seek out it — the neglected and underappreciated. Or, as they’re in any other case recognized, the actual kinds of gamers the University of Kansas would like to have.