Full Speed Ahead
Feb 13, 2026 | Baseball, Sports Extra
By: D. Scott Fritchen
Goodyear Ballpark, a $108 million construction project completed in 2009, is the spring home to the Cleveland Guardians and Cincinnati Reds, and it boasts a 9,500-seat capacity stadium surrounded by tall palm trees and nestled in the west suburb of Phoenix. The left field and right field walls measure 345 feet, and center field measures 410 feet.
The ballpark is one of five stadiums in the Phoenix area that will put some of college baseball's best teams on display in the MLB Desert Invitational in the Grand Canyon State. The tournament field includes Kansas State, Nebraska, Iowa, UConn, Northeastern, Grand Canyon, Air Force and Penn State.
For K-State, Goodyear Ballpark will serve as the first step in what has the makings of a special season for the Wildcats in 2026. K-State comes off back-to-back NCAA Reginal appearances and returns experience and depth from the squad that a year ago posted the program's third-consecutive 30-win season with a 32-26 mark, including a school-record 17 conference victories.
"It's just a privilege to head out there and play baseball and kick off our season and let everyone know that college baseball is at its highest level in the history of the game," K-State head coach Pete Hughes says. "What a great way to start our season."
And K-State isn't taking things slow.
The Wildcats are one of a few teams in college baseball to start out the 2026 season playing four games in four days. K-State's Opening Day gets underway at 2:00 p.m. CT on Friday when the Wildcats face Iowa at Goodyear Ballpark.
K-State then meets UConn at 6:00 p.m. CT on Saturday at Scottsdale Stadium, then faces Penn State at 1:00 p.m. CT on Sunday at Sloan Park, and then finally battles Air Force at 2:00 p.m. CT Monday at Sloan Park.
"Four games in four days is exciting," Hughes says. "We need to play a ton early on so we can get Big 12 ready. That was an easy decision for me, actually. We have a lot of guys and need to evaluate and at the same time we need to win some games against some really good opponents and some of the very best coaches in the country.
"I love the fact that MLB and the world can get a feel for what kinds of coaching is being done in the northeast, the Big Ten, and the Big East. I've coached against these guys and have some long, long friendships with these guys. It's the gold standard of college baseball when it comes to people and integrity, which we're lacking these days. I'm looking forward to the tournament, and congratulations on the MLB for inviting the right people."
Penn State head coach Mike Gambino seemingly indicates that Hughes is near the top of the "right people."
"Coach Hughes, I played and worked for Coach Hughes, and he's a mentor to me and someone I'm really close with," Gambino says. "Competing against him will be a touch emotional. I'm not going to try and go easy on him, but that's pretty special to me."
Hughes, who enters his eighth season at K-State, is the winningest active Big 12 Conference head baseball coach with 852 career victories, which ranks 12th among active Power 4 head coaches, and he is the only active NCAA Division I coach to have served as head coach at four Power 4 programs — Boston College (1999-2006), Virginia Tech (2007-2013) and Oklahoma (2014-2017). He has posted 25 winning seasons in 28 years as a head coach, including all seven seasons at K-State, taking the Wildcats to the 2024 NCAA Super Regional and 2025 NCAA Regional.
Coming off its third straight 30-win season, K-State returns 21 players, including 17 letterwinners, from last season. The list of key returners begins with sophomore infielder/outfielder AJ Evasco, who earned D1Baseball Freshman All-America honors after turning in a record-breaking debut season by setting K-State freshman records with 11 home runs and 52 RBI. Senior infielder Shintaro Inoue, junior infielder Dee Kennedy, senior catcher Bear Madliak, senior outfielder Kyan Lodice and sophomore pitcher/outfielder Donte Lewis figure heavily into the mix as well.
"I like our team," Hughes says. "Last year, we had a bunch of new guys, and I didn't know how they'd compete. They'd never played for me when it counted, and they eased their way into the season on a 1-4 mark. We can't do that this year. We're all comfortable with each other. We all know how we compete and how the flow of the game goes with each other. It's just a matter of running out there and trying to get the pieces in the right spot. The key is to find that out right away.
"I don't want to be making adjustments to our pitching staff or lineup a month into the season because that means we got it wrong out of the gate. I don't think that's going to happen. Hopefully we can play well on the road here and kick our season off better than we did last year."
Hughes, during an MLB Desert Invitational news conference earlier this week, revealed the tentative rundown of his pitchers for the tournament.
"Friday night we'll go with Jimmy Guyette, a right-handed pitcher, who was a versatile guy for us last year and closed and we also stretched him out, and he'll sit tight in that Friday spot," Hughes says. "Saturday we're going back and forth, but it's probably going to be Donte Lewis and then on Sunday will be Tanner Duke, and then on Monday looks like it'll be Lincoln Sheffield right now.
"We have depth. We're deeper than we were last year on the mound, which we'll need over the course of the year."
As for K-State's offense?
"We added a little more firepower," Hughes says.
K-State's key returners include Evasco (.311 with 11 HR and 52 RBI), Inoue (.279 with 9 HR and 31 RBI), Kennedy (.279 with 11 HR and 43 RBI), Madliak (.242 with 8 HR and 29 RBI), Lodice (.276 with 2 HR and 7 RBI) and Lewis (.254 with 6 RBI).
The Wildcats also brought in 12 transfers. That includes senior outfielder Robby Bolin (Nebraska), redshirt senior right-hander Cohen Feser (TCU), senior right-hander Matt Flores (UC Riverside), senior left-hander Robert Fortenberry (Mississippi State), senior infielder Grant Gallagher (East Tennessee State), junior infielder/right-hander Austin Haley (Murray State), graduate catcher Shea McGahan (Southeast Missouri), and redshirt senior infielder Carlos Vasquez (Western Kentucky).
K-State returns 44 of its school-record 97 home runs last season.
"I didn't love the way we ran our offense last year, but that home run piece has always been a component of what we do, and it's always dangerous to rely on that," Hughes says. "That's something that we never want to do, is rely on the home run. I think one through nine, people can run the ball out of the park, but it doesn't matter if you don't have people on base. We'll play guys who get on base and who play really good defense.
"There's four ways of getting into our lineup — you get on base, you control the zone, and you steal a base, and you hit a home run. Everyone loves to talk about the home run. I emphasized the home run probably too many years in my career. It's just one piece of our offense, and it's definitely not reliable."
But K-State, which is actually playing its first nine games of the season away from home, might need some power to get through its first stretch of games. After the MLB Desert Invitational, the Wildcats travel to face Auburn, Nebraska and Michigan in the Amegy Bank College Baseball Series, and then it finishes out with back-to-back games at Louisiana. K-State's home opener against Columbia is on February 27 at Tointon Family Stadium.
The Wildcats' 55-game schedule includes nine opponents that advanced to the 2025 NCAA Regional, while Auburn and West Virginia went to the Super Regional, and Arizona went to the College World Series. In total, K-State will face nine teams — 22 games — that finished with an RPI of 50 or lower in 2025, while two were ranked in the final D1Baseball Top 25 poll. K-State will play midweek non-conference games at Baylor (March 17) and at BYU (March 31) to continue building its RPI as well.
There's method to Hughes' scheduling philosophy.
"Why do we play four games off the bat?" Hughes says. "Because we don't have many opportunities to play midweek games in the middle of America. There's just not enough teams. It's not like the northeast where you can drive five minutes and bump into a Division I non-conference team. We have to get creative when we're on the road to add those non-conference opportunities."
It all starts at 2:00 p.m. Friday.
K-State baseball is back.
Goodyear Ballpark, a $108 million construction project completed in 2009, is the spring home to the Cleveland Guardians and Cincinnati Reds, and it boasts a 9,500-seat capacity stadium surrounded by tall palm trees and nestled in the west suburb of Phoenix. The left field and right field walls measure 345 feet, and center field measures 410 feet.
The ballpark is one of five stadiums in the Phoenix area that will put some of college baseball's best teams on display in the MLB Desert Invitational in the Grand Canyon State. The tournament field includes Kansas State, Nebraska, Iowa, UConn, Northeastern, Grand Canyon, Air Force and Penn State.
For K-State, Goodyear Ballpark will serve as the first step in what has the makings of a special season for the Wildcats in 2026. K-State comes off back-to-back NCAA Reginal appearances and returns experience and depth from the squad that a year ago posted the program's third-consecutive 30-win season with a 32-26 mark, including a school-record 17 conference victories.
"It's just a privilege to head out there and play baseball and kick off our season and let everyone know that college baseball is at its highest level in the history of the game," K-State head coach Pete Hughes says. "What a great way to start our season."
And K-State isn't taking things slow.
The Wildcats are one of a few teams in college baseball to start out the 2026 season playing four games in four days. K-State's Opening Day gets underway at 2:00 p.m. CT on Friday when the Wildcats face Iowa at Goodyear Ballpark.
K-State then meets UConn at 6:00 p.m. CT on Saturday at Scottsdale Stadium, then faces Penn State at 1:00 p.m. CT on Sunday at Sloan Park, and then finally battles Air Force at 2:00 p.m. CT Monday at Sloan Park.
"Four games in four days is exciting," Hughes says. "We need to play a ton early on so we can get Big 12 ready. That was an easy decision for me, actually. We have a lot of guys and need to evaluate and at the same time we need to win some games against some really good opponents and some of the very best coaches in the country.
"I love the fact that MLB and the world can get a feel for what kinds of coaching is being done in the northeast, the Big Ten, and the Big East. I've coached against these guys and have some long, long friendships with these guys. It's the gold standard of college baseball when it comes to people and integrity, which we're lacking these days. I'm looking forward to the tournament, and congratulations on the MLB for inviting the right people."
Penn State head coach Mike Gambino seemingly indicates that Hughes is near the top of the "right people."
"Coach Hughes, I played and worked for Coach Hughes, and he's a mentor to me and someone I'm really close with," Gambino says. "Competing against him will be a touch emotional. I'm not going to try and go easy on him, but that's pretty special to me."
Hughes, who enters his eighth season at K-State, is the winningest active Big 12 Conference head baseball coach with 852 career victories, which ranks 12th among active Power 4 head coaches, and he is the only active NCAA Division I coach to have served as head coach at four Power 4 programs — Boston College (1999-2006), Virginia Tech (2007-2013) and Oklahoma (2014-2017). He has posted 25 winning seasons in 28 years as a head coach, including all seven seasons at K-State, taking the Wildcats to the 2024 NCAA Super Regional and 2025 NCAA Regional.
Coming off its third straight 30-win season, K-State returns 21 players, including 17 letterwinners, from last season. The list of key returners begins with sophomore infielder/outfielder AJ Evasco, who earned D1Baseball Freshman All-America honors after turning in a record-breaking debut season by setting K-State freshman records with 11 home runs and 52 RBI. Senior infielder Shintaro Inoue, junior infielder Dee Kennedy, senior catcher Bear Madliak, senior outfielder Kyan Lodice and sophomore pitcher/outfielder Donte Lewis figure heavily into the mix as well.
"I like our team," Hughes says. "Last year, we had a bunch of new guys, and I didn't know how they'd compete. They'd never played for me when it counted, and they eased their way into the season on a 1-4 mark. We can't do that this year. We're all comfortable with each other. We all know how we compete and how the flow of the game goes with each other. It's just a matter of running out there and trying to get the pieces in the right spot. The key is to find that out right away.
"I don't want to be making adjustments to our pitching staff or lineup a month into the season because that means we got it wrong out of the gate. I don't think that's going to happen. Hopefully we can play well on the road here and kick our season off better than we did last year."
Hughes, during an MLB Desert Invitational news conference earlier this week, revealed the tentative rundown of his pitchers for the tournament.
"Friday night we'll go with Jimmy Guyette, a right-handed pitcher, who was a versatile guy for us last year and closed and we also stretched him out, and he'll sit tight in that Friday spot," Hughes says. "Saturday we're going back and forth, but it's probably going to be Donte Lewis and then on Sunday will be Tanner Duke, and then on Monday looks like it'll be Lincoln Sheffield right now.
"We have depth. We're deeper than we were last year on the mound, which we'll need over the course of the year."
As for K-State's offense?
"We added a little more firepower," Hughes says.
K-State's key returners include Evasco (.311 with 11 HR and 52 RBI), Inoue (.279 with 9 HR and 31 RBI), Kennedy (.279 with 11 HR and 43 RBI), Madliak (.242 with 8 HR and 29 RBI), Lodice (.276 with 2 HR and 7 RBI) and Lewis (.254 with 6 RBI).
The Wildcats also brought in 12 transfers. That includes senior outfielder Robby Bolin (Nebraska), redshirt senior right-hander Cohen Feser (TCU), senior right-hander Matt Flores (UC Riverside), senior left-hander Robert Fortenberry (Mississippi State), senior infielder Grant Gallagher (East Tennessee State), junior infielder/right-hander Austin Haley (Murray State), graduate catcher Shea McGahan (Southeast Missouri), and redshirt senior infielder Carlos Vasquez (Western Kentucky).
K-State returns 44 of its school-record 97 home runs last season.
"I didn't love the way we ran our offense last year, but that home run piece has always been a component of what we do, and it's always dangerous to rely on that," Hughes says. "That's something that we never want to do, is rely on the home run. I think one through nine, people can run the ball out of the park, but it doesn't matter if you don't have people on base. We'll play guys who get on base and who play really good defense.
"There's four ways of getting into our lineup — you get on base, you control the zone, and you steal a base, and you hit a home run. Everyone loves to talk about the home run. I emphasized the home run probably too many years in my career. It's just one piece of our offense, and it's definitely not reliable."
But K-State, which is actually playing its first nine games of the season away from home, might need some power to get through its first stretch of games. After the MLB Desert Invitational, the Wildcats travel to face Auburn, Nebraska and Michigan in the Amegy Bank College Baseball Series, and then it finishes out with back-to-back games at Louisiana. K-State's home opener against Columbia is on February 27 at Tointon Family Stadium.
The Wildcats' 55-game schedule includes nine opponents that advanced to the 2025 NCAA Regional, while Auburn and West Virginia went to the Super Regional, and Arizona went to the College World Series. In total, K-State will face nine teams — 22 games — that finished with an RPI of 50 or lower in 2025, while two were ranked in the final D1Baseball Top 25 poll. K-State will play midweek non-conference games at Baylor (March 17) and at BYU (March 31) to continue building its RPI as well.
There's method to Hughes' scheduling philosophy.
"Why do we play four games off the bat?" Hughes says. "Because we don't have many opportunities to play midweek games in the middle of America. There's just not enough teams. It's not like the northeast where you can drive five minutes and bump into a Division I non-conference team. We have to get creative when we're on the road to add those non-conference opportunities."
It all starts at 2:00 p.m. Friday.
K-State baseball is back.
Players Mentioned
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