How Wichita State baseball capitalized on momentum with its 2024 recruiting class
By the end of his debut season, Wichita State baseball coach Brian Green managed to successfully establish some momentum.
The Shockers won 10 of their final 13 games and were on the brink of returning to the NCAA tournament for the first time in a decade.
But that was only the beginning of a program rebuild in the new world of college baseball with NIL money and the transfer portal. The offseason process, more important than ever, began with internal recruiting in order to retain the majority of the team’s promising young core, then shifted to adding pitching, speed and defense to the roster.
As September approaches with the start of fall ball, Green is confident that WSU has capitalized on its momentum with its 2024 recruiting class.
“We had to prove to everybody across the country that we were going to be good coaches and the culture here was going to be good and we were going to be competitive,” Green said. “With how crazy the portal was, for us to have 23 guys returning was pretty loud and speaks to our culture. If you look at all of the guys we have coming back and how they’re doing in the summer and the fact that they want to be here, then mix in the guys who we brought in, we’re pretty excited right now with where our roster is at.”
Among those 23 returners are nine with notable starting experience from last season, including standout sophomores in Camden Johnson (third base), Tyler Dobbs (pitcher), Lane Haworth (outfielder), Kam Durnin (middle infielder) and Brady Hamilton (pitcher). WSU also brought back experienced hitters in Mauricio Millan (catcher), Jordan Rogers (utility), Josh Livingston (first base) and Ryan Callahan (utility).
Losing a promising ace in Tommy LaPour (TCU) and slugger in Derek Williams (Miami) stung, but an influx of NIL funds to the baseball program allowed Green to be more aggressive with additions in the transfer portal this summer.
Most notably, WSU managed to bring back Grant Adler (Kansas) and Jace Miner (Oklahoma) after each pitcher transferred out of the program for the 2024 season. Adler was the AAC Newcomer Pitcher of the Year with a 5-4 record and 2.55 ERA in 2023, while Miner sported a 2.05 ERA in 44 innings of work in the bullpen to earn second team all-conference honors in 2023 with the Shockers.
Both figure to contend for WSU’s weekend rotation in 2025.
WSU also added experience through the portal in Texas Tech transfer Owen Washburn, an outfielder with three years of starting experience in the Big 12, Siena transfer Arnad Mulamekic, a 6-foot-6 senior starter who should contend for a weekend spot in WSU’s starting rotation, and Oral Roberts transfer Owen Reynolds. The Shockers also added former highly-rated high school prospects in sophomore middle infielder Eric Fernandez (Miami transfer) and freshman reliever M.J. Seo (LSU transfer).
“When you look at Wichita State, we’ve got a great opportunity in the transfer portal to grab power-5 players who were contributors,” Green said. “Maybe they weren’t playing as much as they would like.
“Maybe they were a platoon guy or a Tuesday guy or a reliever. We can offer them a program where it isn’t a step down, it’s just a better opportunity for you as a player to come in and play. The guys we’re bringing in, these are good players who have done something at the D1 level. We weren’t in that arena last year, but now that we have NIL support, it was a much different experience for us this go-around.”
With the graduation of ace Caden Favors and the departure of LaPour, Green knew he had work to do to solidify WSU’s rotation. He believes he accomplished just that by retaining Dobbs and Hamilton, then adding Adler, Miner and Mulamekic — three seniors — from the portal. Miner, Mulamekic and Dobbs are all left-handed throwers.
WSU returns a host of relievers in Caleb Anderson, Hunter Holmes, Daniel Zang, Jack Mount and Michael Mulhollon, while the additions of Seo, Reynolds and a host of junior college transfers should also help.
“You want to get old as fast as you can and find guys who are going to throw strikes,” Green said. “We’re definitely going to be more left-handed than we were a year ago. We are way less one-dimensional than we were a year ago. The biggest thing we had last year was a lot of short-stint, one-inning guys and that caught up to us at the end of the year. Guys like Hunter Holmes and Caleb Anderson were fatigued by the end of the year. I think we’re going to be able to keep those guys fresher longer this year.”
A good core of hitters are returning, but Green knew WSU needed to upgrade its overall speed and defense to contend this upcoming season. Fernandez is a slick-fielding middle infielder and Washburn is a corner outfielder with a big bat, but Green mostly tapped into his JUCO recruiting connections to fill out his wish list.
Outfielder Davis Mauzy was a JUCO All-American last season at Blue Mountain, hitting .339 with 43 runs and 35 stolen bases; infielder Jordan Black hit .344 with 10 home runs, 55 RBIs and 65 runs at Johnson County; outfielder Kaleb Duncan hit .325 with 23 stolen bases at Golden West College; and infielder Zeb Henry hit .285 with 24 stolen bases at Eastern Oklahoma State. All four could contend for playing time immediately.
WSU also signed eight freshmen to its 2024 recruiting class, including highly-touted prospects in outfielder Carson Beavers and middle infielder Melvin Blocker.
“We’re going to be much more athletic,” Green said. “You’re going to see a different team athletically on the field this year. We’ll definitely be faster. We wanted to adjust our outfield and speed up our outfield and we were able to do that in the recruiting process. Positionally, we’re going to be deep. We have a ton of experience coming back with guys who are going to have leashes and then you’re going to see more speed and a lot more skill defensively in the infield.”
If WSU can play with the fire the Shockers showed in May, when they punched their way to the American Athletic Conference tournament championship game, this team could be in contention to end the program’s postseason drought.
Even with a strong close, WSU finished with just a 32-29 record — a respectable debut year, but still far from the consistency required to push for an at-large bid to a regional.
That’s the type of baseball Green is striving for in Wichita and he believes he has assembled a team that can do it.
“It’s going to be a much different fall, I can tell you that,” Green said. “We have so many returners back, so from a culture perspective, we won’t spend as much time on the ‘how’ and we’ll focus a lot more on the skill development early in the fall. The coaching staff, we’re genuinely excited about this group. For us to be able to taste what we tasted last year, to be as competitive as we were late when we needed to be and to have the bulk of those guys coming back, I’m really excited.”
This story was originally published August 28, 2024 at 5:01 AM.
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