LAWRENCE — Dan Fitzgerald is talking about the players of his who are eligible for this year’s MLB draft, and his comments pivot toward two Kansas baseball players who aren’t eligible.
Fitzgerald, the Jayhawks’ head coach, points to Brady Ballinger and Dominic Voegele. The good news he explains, amid all of the uncertainty with the upcoming draft, is KU doesn’t have to worry about if those two will be back as juniors next year.
Ballinger provides Kansas with someone who proved to be the team’s best hitter this past season, and an All-Big 12 Conference first team selection from 2025. And in Voegele, Kansas has someone who can once again lead its starting rotation.
But given the current landscape of college athletics, a player simply not being able to make the jump to the professional ranks just yet doesn’t result in the same surety of that individual’s return as it would have in the past. Speculation could linger regarding that athlete’s potential to explore transferring, as they look to consider programs that might be able to offer them more money to play there.
Fitzgerald, though, was clear earlier this month that the anticipation was always that Ballinger and Voegele would be back.
“Zero drama with those guys, never a conversation about whether or not they were coming back,” said Fitzgerald, who’s also bringing back pitching coach Brandon Scott, hitting coach Tyler Hancock and recruiting coordinator Jon Coyne.
“I went out to see Brady play at Team USA because I wanted to celebrate that with him, not because I was nervous about him jumping in. And Brandon was with (Voegele) yesterday, just to see him, and not because there’s any sort of — like, we had no fear of those guys going in.”
That’s not to say Fitzgerald and his staff don’t devote time to roster retention, just has Fitzgerald hasn’t overlooked staff retention. There were conversations during the season with Ballinger and Voegele about how, while the program took a significant step forward in 2025, it could be in a position to do even more in 2026, and those two are going to be big pieces of that effort.
Fitzgerald characterized those discussions as more so being about those two assuming different roles ahead of next spring, though, rather than talking about what it would take to keep them in Lawrence.
Some leaders are moving on from this past season’s team, like graduate infielder/outfielder Jackson Hauge and redshirt senior infielder Michael Brooks. So, there’s a need to be intentional with returners like Ballinger and Voegele about what things will look like next season. The environment around the team that Hauge and Brooks helped foster is one that helped the group enjoy a historic season, and one Ballinger and Voegele will need to contribute to creating in their own ways.
During the 2025 campaign, Kansas finished 43-17 overall and made the NCAA tournament. Those 43 wins tied for the second-most victories in a season in program history, and that NCAA regional trip was the team’s first since 2014. Ballinger and Voegele helped guide the Jayhawks to those accomplishments in just the third year of a rebuild Fitzgerald started ahead of the 2023 season, and optimism remains high ahead of Fitzgerald’s fourth season at the helm.
Jordan Guskey covers University of Kansas Athletics at The Topeka Capital-Journal. He was the 2022 National Sports Media Association’s sportswriter of the year for the state of Kansas. Contact him at jmguskey@gannett.com or on Twitter at @JordanGuskey.
This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Brady Ballinger, Dominic Voegele are set to return for Kansas baseball
