It’s just seven wins in a season of more than 50 games, but the Kansas baseball team’s 7-0 start to the 2025 season has landed the Jayhawks in a pretty enviable position.
Third-year KU coach Dan Fitzgerald’s third Kansas team currently sits atop college baseball’s RPI rankings in the No. 1 spot heading into its home-opening series this weekend against Omaha.
While that has been a popular conversation piece across the KU campus, the players and coaches responsible for it have hardly given it a second thought.
“The RPI thing right now, it’s like your GPA after the first pop quiz in your semester class,” Fitzgerald said from Hoglund Ballpark on Wednesday afternoon. “This is not just coach speak. This is who we are. Whatever our RPI is on Selection Monday, that will literally be (the first time) I look.”
While the KU coach may not pay too much attention to or put too much stock into the in-season RPI rankings — “When I say I’m off the grid, I have an email account. That’s about as advanced as I get with social media,” Fitzgerald said Wednesday — the players he coaches have all seen the ranking and seen people hype it up across various social media channels.
Like their coach, the Jayhawks aren’t ready to throw a parade for the early accomplishment, but at least a couple Jayhawks admitted that seeing Kansas at the top of the RPI rankings produced more than a little pride.
“We can smile about it for sure,” sophomore pitcher Cooper Moore said Wednesday. “It’s a pretty cool thing, but it’s not something we want to focus too much on because that can change in one game, two games.”
Fellow-pitcher Dom Voegele, who was named the Preseason Pitcher of the Year in the Big 12 and a preseason All-American by some outlets, agreed with his teammate and roommate on the road when asked about the Jayhawks’ RPI ranking.
“We’ve seen it. We’ve looked at it. But we realize we’re only two weeks into the season and a lot can change from here on out,” Voegle, who entered the week 1-0 with 15 strikeouts in 11 innings over two appearances. “So, we don’t really look at it too much. It’s definitely a little bit of a confidence booster, but we still have the whole season to play.”
In all, that means 49 more games, including 31 against Big 12 Conference foes, just in the regular season.
There are high expectations within the program this season and the Jayhawks aren’t afraid of talking about the task of standing up to the lofty hopes that exist both inside and outside of the program for this team.
Far more than their current RPI ranking, that, Fitzgerald said, is one of the things that has made the Jayhawks’ 7-0 start feel like something to celebrate.
“Proud of the start,” Fitzgerald said Wednesday. “I think that the two things that we talk about the most are being an unbelievable teammate and playing your tail off, and we’ve done that in all seven games. I’m proud of the make-up of the team and the competitive nature. It hasn’t been real clean. It’s not the prettiest baseball you’ve ever seen in those first seven games. But the competitive piece and the togetherness piece has been outstanding.”
Next up, the Jayhawks will play host to Omaha at 3 p.m. Thursday in the home opener at Hoglund Ballpark.
The schedule for the rest of the four-game, weekend series with the Mavericks reads: 3 p.m. Friday, 2 p.m. Saturday in Wichita and Noon on Sunday back in Lawrence.
— For tickets to all KU athletic events, visit kuathletics.com
