photo by: St. Cloud Rox

Manning West plays for the St. Cloud Rox in this undated photo in St. Cloud, Minn.

The future of the Kansas baseball roster looks a lot clearer following the MLB Draft.

With several prominent draft-eligible contributors from the 2026 season unselected over the weekend, KU now has the chance to retain its first-team all-conference closer Boede Rahe, as well as three additional members of its starting lineup in second baseman Cade Baldridge, catcher Augusto Mungarrieta and third baseman Dylan Schlotterback.

Rahe, Baldridge and Mungarrieta all made social media posts officially announcing their plans to return in the wake of the draft, as did right-handed reliever Manning West (more on him in a moment).

All things considered, this retention should make for a somewhat quieter next month of the baseball offseason before the fall semester begins, since the Jayhawks don’t have to plug many unexpected holes. Head coach Dan Fitzgerald said himself in a press release that there were other players they had anticipated getting drafted.

But summer is never truly silent in college baseball, and some players have only recently arrived in their temporary wood-bat homes. Current and former Jayhawks alike are gaining valuable experience that could end up shaping KU’s 2027 season.

• West didn’t make it to St. Cloud, Minnesota, until mid-June to join the variety of current and future Jayhawks playing for the Rox in the Northwoods League. But he has made an immediate impact.

In a victory over the Badlands Big Sticks — who started fellow Jayhawk Gavyn Schlotterback at first base — West pitched the final two scoreless innings, working around a lone double, to seal the Rox’s 11-6 win and give his team the Great Plains West first-half championship.

That was a fitting display from a pitcher who has been one of KU’s unsung heroes the last two seasons as a high-leverage reliever.

But since then, St. Cloud has deployed him as a starter. His first showing was uneven and relatively brief as he gave up a pair of earned runs on six hits in four innings against Bismarck on June 29. Next, however, he stretched out to seven innings with one earned run on three hits, striking out 13 batters, in a 5-3 win at Mankato on July 5. He was named the league’s top pitcher of the night. (Emerson McKnight, by the way, had also earned pitcher of the night honors for St. Cloud after tossing a complete-game shutout at the start of July.)

West, who previously played at Walters State Community College and Oklahoma State, worked as a starter when he first arrived at KU in 2025. Could he find his way back into rotational consideration in 2027, especially with Mathis Nayral having been drafted by the Toronto Blue Jays in the 13th round on Sunday? He might at least be a candidate.

• Jamie Palmese is currently KU’s lone offseason transfer acquisition from a Division I program. The former East Tennessee State center fielder earned some form of all-conference honor in each of his three years with the Buccaneers. His wide-ranging career includes a junior season in which he hit .335 with four home runs and a sophomore season in which he hit .292 with 17.

Palmese was originally slated to play for the Bourne Braves in the prestigious Cape Cod Baseball League, perhaps the sport’s best known summer league. Former KU catcher Ben Hartl spent some time there before he was drafted by the Texas Rangers in 2024. In any case, Palmese eventually made it to the Cape, albeit with a different team: the Chatham Anglers.

The native of Berlin, Connecticut, singled and scored a run in his debut last week.

• Quite a few graduating seniors from KU baseball will be looking for professional homes after going undrafted over the weekend. That group includes first baseman Josh Dykhoff, designated hitter/second baseman Dariel Osoria and plenty more. Many Jayhawks have caught on in this fashion in recent years, or started out in independent ball before making a move to the minors, as Jackson Hauge did recently.

In any case, one such Jayhawk, Max Soliz Jr., has been plying his trade in the Northwoods League after concluding his collegiate career, similar to how Hauge and Sawyer Smith did last summer. He is back with the Wausau Woodchucks for the third straight year, the team with which he was a Northwoods League All-Star in 2025 when he hit .338 in 53 regular-season games with 13 home runs.

He never quite transferred that level of production into either of his two years at KU. In 2026, he batted .200 while starting 31 of the 33 games in which he appeared. The catcher recorded five homers and at one point hit a walk-off single in extra innings against UCF.

• One of Soliz’s teammates in Wausau, first baseman Ryan Chase (a Santa Fe College transfer headed to KU), earned an All-Star nod this summer and also participated in the Northwoods League Home Run Challenge.

Through a team-high 37 games, Chase was batting .314 with a .931 OPS, five home runs and 32 RBIs.

• Landen Lozier, a Green Bay, Wisconsin, native who had stints at a pair of Big Ten schools before joining KU as a redshirt sophomore in 2026, is currently in action for the Green Bay Blue Ribbons of the Wisconsin State League. He went 8-for-29 (.276) in his first eight games.

This is the fourth straight summer he has spent time with the Blue Ribbons. On a couple of occasions, he has parlayed his performances in Green Bay into opportunities in the Northwoods League.

photo by: Brad Krause/Krause Sports Photography

Playing for the Green Bay Blue Ribbons, Landen Lozier bats during a game against the Lombard Orioles on Saturday, June 27, 2026, at Joannes Stadium in Green Bay, Wis.

photo by: Alistair Hennessey/Chatham Anglers

Playing for the Chatham Anglers, Jamie Palmese bats against the Harwich Mariners on Saturday, July 11, 2026, in Harwich, Mass.

photo by: Wausau Woodchucks

Playing for the Wausau Woodchucks, Max Soliz Jr. rounds third base against the Madison Mallards on Saturday, July 4, 2026, in Wausau, Wis.