After roster makeover, Wichita State baseball has a new look under coach Brian Green
Fall ball has a different feel inside Eck Stadium this month for the Wichita State baseball team, which is to be expected with a coaching change.
New coach Brian Green has virtually turned over the roster with 34 newcomers — 18 incoming freshmen, 14 from junior college and two from the transfer portal — mixed with just 11 returners.
Outside of junior catcher Mauricio Millan and senior left-handed pitcher Caden Favors, no player has an established role with the Shockers. Playing time at almost every position in the spring is currently up for grabs by the work done this fall.
“It’s made practices really intense and really competitive,” Green said. “Guys are experiencing stress and failure for the first time because we’re scrimmaging now. The vibe of the program has a lot of positive energy right now, which is good. We’ve got heavy competition going on.”
Green considers the roster reload a success after he started in June with virtually every player on last season’s roster in the transfer portal following the coaching change.
To pull it off, it required his staff, which includes recruiting coordinator Clay Overcash, pitching coach Anthony Claggett and hitting coach Anthony Miller, to be on the road recruiting so much that they weren’t in the same room together for seven weeks after Green was hired on June 5.
The result was an influx of talent to the roster from the junior-college ranks: infielder Ryan Callahan (Johnson County), infielder Josh Livingston (Crowder College), outfielder Dayvin Johnson (Crowder College) and pitcher Daniel Zang (Dakota County Technical College) have all been standouts this fall.
“We really hit the juco’s hard and those juco guys have not disappointed,” Green said. “A lot of them are Midwest juco guys and they’re performing at a really high level. The coaches did a really great job.”
Green also considers himself fortunate for being on the receiving end of such a highly-touted incoming freshmen class, which was primarily recruited by the previous staff and maintained by the new one. Green did make two major additions in shortstop Darnell Parker Jr. and pitcher Tommy LaPour, which helped Wichita State’s 2023 recruiting class be ranked as the 36th-best nationally by Perfect Game.
Parker is already considered an elite defender at shortstop, while LaPour has impressed on the mound, as has fellow freshmen Ryan Geraghty and Brady Hamilton. Meanwhile, Kamden Durnin has pushed for playing time in the infield as well.
“This freshmen class is definitely as good as advertised,” Green said. “Perfect Game had us at 36 and I would say it’s every bit of that. I think they got that one right. This class is very talented and I think you’re going to see some of those guys on the field right away. They’re definitely making their mark.”
Those freshman arms will likely help WSU’s starting rotation right away, as LaPour, Geraghty and Hamilton are all being looked at as potential starters. Considering their experience, Favors and Zang are good bets for weekend spots, while senior returner Nate Adler and junior left-hander Gavin Oswald, a former Oklahoma commit, also seem to be in the mix.
“We’ve got some good fastballs on the mound and we’ve got enough left-handers where I think we’re going to be able to match up out of the bullpen,” Green said. “We got some guys who can really run it up there. LaPour has been clocked at 97 (mph), Geraghty is at 94 and moving it, Zang has been up to 95. We’ve got a lot of really good fastballs and we’ll pitch to that.”
Millan is the only returner from last season’s lineup and he’ll be spelled at times this season by fellow returner Alex Birge behind the plate.
Green has been pleasantly surprised by the bats of the returners, as Seth Stroh, Jordan Rogers, Jaden Gustafson and Will Stark have all impressed. Stroh and Gustafson figure to rotate in the outfield with a trio of junior-college transfers in Johnson, Brayden Luikart and Derek Williams.
Meanwhile, Rogers and Stark figure to play a utility role this season, bouncing around the infield where needed. Callahan and Livingston, two more junior-college transfers, have hit so well that they’ve likely demanded playing time somewhere in the infield, while a pair of freshmen, Parker and Durnin, are taking turns at shortstop.
The Shockers will play their first fall exhibition on Saturday against Cowley College at 3 p.m. at Eck Stadium with a final tune-up slated for Saturday, Oct. 28 at Dallas Baptist.
“Right now we’re just focused on our system and how we want to play the game,” Green said. “Like I told our guys the other day, ‘Hey, you’re all really good baseball players, but there is a way this coaching staff would like you to play.’ So getting those types of things in, setting expectations in the dugout, going through the process and the routines that we want to install, talking about our philosophy and approach. There’s a lot of system stuff we’re trying to get through.
“And secondly, we want to identify things that we need to work on from November to January. Those three months tend to play a big part in how your season goes. So we’ve got to figure out what we need to work on to make sure these guys come back to us in January ready to go.”
