Aglut of highly regarded arm talent is the best path for college baseball teams to take to reach the College World Series. They need reliable weekend starters coupled with nasty middle and dominant back-end relief pitchers to round out a consistent staff of 10 to 12 guys who can take the mound.
In 2013, Kansas State was on the cusp of an Omaha trip because of its rip-roaring bats that opponents seldom silenced. Pitching took a backseat that season, such as in K-State’s 20-11 NCAA regional opener to set aside Wichita State at Tointon Family Stadium.
Now in his sixth season, head coach Pete Hughes’ teams have emphasized lethal lineups with solid pitching. That was a slow build that began with the recruiting acquisition of Jordan Wicks, who threw during Hughes’ first three years from 2019 to 2021.
German Fajardo was a key transfer portal loss after starting 16 games in 2023. Mostly though, the corps returned starters Owen Boerema and Jackson Wentworth with potential rotation addition Ty Ruhl, who had 24 relief appearances and two starts in 2023. Closer Tyson Neighbors was first team All-America in 2023 with 11 saves and a 1.85 ERA, and he was another key component who opted for a 2024 return.
Neighbors’ ninth save of this season came in a 67-pitch, 10-out appearance against an Arkansas team that had just come off a 17-run performance the day before.
“I’m going to go out there and do my best to get as many outs as we need to win the ballgame,” said Neighbors, who is in his fourth season out of Royce City, Texas. “I needed to get more outs than normal, but with the team like we have, it’s no issue.”
K-State head to the Charlottesville, Virginia, super regional this weekend after its core staffers held in check Louisiana Tech, Arkansas and Southeast Missouri State to clinch the Fayetteville regional last week.
Boerema took Game 1 near the midpoint — similar for Ruhl in Game 3 — and Wentworth went almost seven innings before Neighbors’ herculean effort.
Ruhl showed well in hot, pre-regional bullpen sessions after he missed much of the season injured. His return and ability to start delivers another dimension for K-State’s staff.
“We’re as deep as we’ve been; we’re healthy,” Hughes said. “Ty’s fresh right now. He had an opportunity to play professional baseball last year and came back to be a starter for us.
“The super (regional) setup (best of three) is just what we do every weekend in the Big 12. You try to win a series. That’s the simple goal, right? … We’re just gonna go win a series.”
Coming into 2024, Cole Wisenbaker was back in relief with Mason Buss as a mid-week starter option. The Wildcats needed three to five more options to approach the 10 to 12 staff arm range. Similar to how they grabbed Boerema from a small school Minnesota prior to last season, they dipped into Division III for grad students JJ Slack and Josh Wintroub, an innings-eater who pitches to contact and, even with 13 starts, is perfect for long relief. Slack registered the final two outs to clinch the regional championship and has posted nothing but zeroes in two postseason innings.
Freshman Blake Dean split time between the bullpen (mostly) and starter innings and has showed dynamic hard breaking balls that keep batters off balance. The Wildcats need all of the stellar pitching they can manage against Virginia, the NCAA’s No. 2 hitting team with a .338 team batting average. The roles appear entrenched for the weekend, and Hughes likely will hand balls to Boerema and Wentworth. Ruhl is a wildcard to determine if the Wildcats need a late-inning bridge to get to Neighbors. Otherwise, Ruhl could start a potential Game 3.
“We’ll probably go TBA for Game 3,” Hughes said. “If we need to use Ty in a high leverage situation on Friday/Saturday, we’ll do that.”
