photo by: Mike Gunnoe/Special to the Journal-World

Kansas sophomore Cooper Moore catches a pop fly against Cincinnati at Hoglund Ballpark Saturday, May 3, 2025.

It was, he says now, both one of the coolest moments of Cooper Moore’s life and one of the scariest.

On a rainy day the summer before his freshman year of high school, Moore, a native of Bixby, Oklahoma, went down to a neighborhood pond with a friend to do some fishing.

“Fish are biting when it’s storming,” Moore said, by way of explanation.

The young angler was sitting under a tree flipping a jig — a method for luring bass — with one fishing pole in his hand and another on his back. At that point, well, “30 seconds later, it just landed right on top of me.”

Moore was struck by lightning.

Luckily for him, the strike targeted the pole on his back, not the one he was carrying. He said that “it literally turned the carbon-fiber pole into hair.”

“The tree didn’t look too good after,” he added. “There was a couple branches on the ground on fire.”

Moore was ultimately fine, evidently — as a bonus, an online fishing supply company sent him free gear — and four years later began his career as a pitcher for the Kansas baseball team.

“I had a better chance of winning the lottery twice than getting struck by lightning,” Moore said, “so I got to take it as a cool moment since I’m OK from it and I’ve been doing better ever since.”

It’s certainly hard to imagine him frightened or intimidated by anything that could happen within the confines of the baseball diamond.

As KU’s Saturday night starting pitcher this season, Moore doesn’t display the same unshakable calm of his Friday night counterpart Dominic Voegele, but instead a competitive intensity that often becomes quite apparent — as in his chest-pounding, fist-pumping celebration when he made a tough catch leaping off the mound on March 30 against Oklahoma State, or when he exchanged words with Kansas State’s Sam Flores after getting him out in the eighth inning on April 19.

“It’s almost like a — and this isn’t the best way to do it — one-versus-nine,” KU pitching coach Brandon Scott told the Journal-World. “It’s him versus the entire team. He just locks in on every at-bat, and that’s been really special to watch.”

Moore’s play has indeed been special of late. He is the Big 12’s pitcher of the week after he went eight innings and allowed one run with a career-high 10 strikeouts against BYU last Friday. It was the sixth time he had gone at least seven innings this season, for a coaching staff that places tremendous value on innings pitched, and particularly impressive given that he had served as a reliever during his freshman year — and that he didn’t necessarily expect to become a pitcher in college.

“It was kind of the last thing I expected,” he said.

Yes, Moore was a catcher prospect coming out of Bixby. In fact, he was the top catcher in the state.

“Everyone else that I’d played for and played with thought I was going to be a catcher,” he said, “but turns out I ended up being a better pitcher than I am catcher.”

Scott, and head coach Dan Fitzgerald, actually inherited Moore. He was recruited by Ritch Price’s staff. Scott said they wanted to give him “an open chance” to play both roles but his aptitude as a pitcher became immediately apparent.

“To his credit, he bought in immediately,” Scott said. “The attributes that we saw — strike-thrower, good changeup, good curveball, and unbelievable competitor — have played out as we’ve progressed.”

Indeed, it became similarly obvious, at least to Fitzgerald, that Moore would play an even bigger role in 2025 after his team-high 29 relief appearances as a freshman in 2024.

“Coach Fitzgerald made a comment last year, probably about this time of the year, and Cooper was in the bullpen, he was throwing every game, and Dan’s like, ‘He’s going to start for us next year,'” Scott recalled. “He made the comment, ‘You just watch him, he’s our best mover.'”

Moore’s ERA of 3.49 this season ranks second among the frequently used pitchers on the team, behind that of lefty reliever Gavin Brasosky. One common thread in Moore’s appearances is that he frequently shakes off tough early developments — which can happen if he leaves a sinker up in the zone, Scott says, even if the pitch usually produces a lot of ground balls — and can still go eight innings. As Scott puts it, one pitch has no bearing on the next for Moore.

That was clear when Moore gave up three runs in the first three frames against K-State, and three in the first inning at UCF, and KU still won both games because Moore was stingy the rest of the way.

“In each start, there has been an inning or two where the pitch count goes above 12 and you’re like ‘Dang,'” Fitzgerald said. “But for the most part he’s had some five-pitch, six-pitch innings and when you do that it just shrinks it.”

Fitzgerald said Moore’s resilience in these sorts of situations is not surprising because of the caliber of athlete he is. (Although he said he’d give Voegele a chance to hit before he would Moore — “Coop would be really upset that I said that.”)

“I think when you can beat people with your fastball, your efficiency goes up exponentially, and Cooper’s fastball is so good,” Fitzgerald said. “Teams know it’s coming, but it’s why they pay guys in the big leagues a lot of money to throw sinkers. And he keeps the ball on the ground, which with a really good defense leads to efficient innings.”

When the Big 12 Preseason Pitcher of the Year Voegele is at his best — which, granted, he hasn’t always been this season — KU has two elite options in its starting rotation.

The Jayhawks will need Moore on Friday night in a potentially high-reward matchup at West Virginia, as they will need him the next week at the Big 12 Championship, as they will the following weekend in an NCAA regional. As for any kind of run beyond that, well, he’s already accomplished something less likely than winning the lottery twice.

photo by: Sarah Buchanan/Special to the Journal-World

Kansas sophomore pitcher Cooper Moore throws the ball to start the Jayhawks’ home opener against Omaha on Thursday, Feb. 27, 2025.