On Wednesday, November 8th, thousands of high school baseball players across the country signed their National Letters of Intent to successfully fulfill their dedication to playing baseball at the collegiate level, with a multitude of players from Kansas alone going through this process. 

Over the next few weeks, our staff will spend some time highlighting those names that signed their NLI to play baseball at the Division I level. We’ll do so by breaking these names up by conference, and we started with the SEC last week, which you can find HERE. We followed that up with the Big 12, HERE. 

Keep reading below to learn more about the names from Kansas that are headed to a pair of Big 10 programs next fall.

NEBRASKA 

Nebraska scooped into the ‘Sunflower State’ to pick up a pair of arms in RHP Gavin Blachowicz (Olathe South) and RHP Whit Rhodes (Hesston):

+ Blachowicz rose a handful of spots in our most recent rankings update, climbing into the top five and cracking the top-500 nationally as well. He boasts a prototypical starter’s frame, toeing the rubber at 6-foot-3, 205-pounds with strength throughout. This summer, Blachowicz pitched at an easy 88-92 mph with his fastball at Creekside, showing life up in the zone and seemingly more to come as he continues to mature physically. Off that, he spun a 75-77 mph curveball that flashed some depth, though he turned to it sparingly. 

+ Like his counterpart, Rhodes is a physically imposing presence on the rubber at 6-foot-3, 210-pounds with strength throughout, particularly in the lower half. Rhodes is a power arm - he gets down the mound with aggression and has a loud arsenal to pair, starting with an upper-80s to low-90s fastball. He throws a firm upper-70s breaking ball at 2700+ RPM with sharp spin and bite that he’s able to spot below the zone, and we saw him throw a low-80s changeup at arm speed for strikes this winter, too. 

Whit Rhodes

IOWA 

Another arm from Kansas headed to the Big 10 next fall is LHP Liam Roche (Shawnee Mission South), who will head to one of the top pitching programs in the country next fall. Roche is a strike thrower, who’s fastball plays in the mid-to-upper-80s from a tight, slightly deceptive ¾ arm slot. He’s able to spin a breaking ball with bend and depth for strikes, and we’ve seen Roche show feel for a fading changeup in previous looks, too. 

Liam Roche

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