Kansas State baseball head coach Pete Hughes has agreed to a contract extension through the 2031 season, K-State director of athletics Gene Taylor announced Friday.<\/p>\n
\u201cCoach Hughes has established a great culture within our baseball program and consistently put our teams in a position to compete in the postseason,\u201d Taylor said in a statement. \u201cHe and his staff have continued to elevate our program in all facets \u2014 talent level, wins, facilities, community involvement and academics \u2014 and we are excited for the years ahead under his leadership. In addition, Pete, his wife Debby and their family have made Manhattan their home and will continue to make a tremendous impact on our community.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since arriving in 2018, Hughes has piloted K-State to seven consecutive winning seasons and 230 overall victories (82 Big 12 wins), including four straight 30-win seasons. The streak ties the longest stretch of 30-win seasons in school history and the program\u2019s first such run since 1988-91. Under Hughes\u2019 leadership, K-State baseball has posted a .717 home winning percentage over the last six seasons, winning 114 games at Tointon Family Stadium.<\/p>\n
Hughes has led K-State to numerous historic highs during his tenure in Manhattan, highlighted most notably by back-to-back NCAA Tournament berths in 2024 and 2025, marking the third time K-State made consecutive appearances in school history.<\/p>\n
K-State\u2019s 2024 postseason run marked the program\u2019s first berth to the NCAA Tournament since 2013 and included the program\u2019s second Super Regional appearance after claiming the Fayetteville Regional championship title.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy wife Debby and I will look back at our career and will be forever grateful for Gene Taylor, President Meyers, President Linton and the entire community of Manhattan,\u201d said Hughes. \u201cWe were given an amazing opportunity to raise a family and build a program for the most deserving fan base in college athletics. It\u2019s truly been humbling to be a part of it, but we are certainly not finished with the accomplishments that we\u2019ve set for this program in 2018.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an honor to have the confidence of our leadership in our program moving forward. It\u2019ll be a privilege to continue to raise the standard of Kansas State baseball. Again, we\u2019ll do it our way, the K-State way through hard work and integrity.\u201d<\/p>\n
Under Hughes, the Wildcats have also emerged as a consistent pipeline to the Major League Baseball Draft, with 20 student-athletes accounting for 21 K-State MLB Draft picks, including 14 players selected in the first 10 rounds. From 2021 to 2026, he has produced six consecutive MLB Draft classes with multiple selections. K-State is also one of only two programs in all of college baseball to have five middle infielders selected in the top 10 rounds over the last four years.<\/p>\n
The 2019 and 2024 MLB Draft classes were headlined by the program\u2019s highest all-time draft picks with first rounders and No. 21 overall picks Jordan Wicks (LHP, Chicago Cubs) and Kaelen Culpepper (SS, Minnesota Twins).<\/p>\n
At K-State, Hughes has mentored four All-Americans \u2014 Culpepper, Dee Kennedy, Tyson Neighbors, and Wicks \u2014 as well as 2025 Freshman All-American AJ Evasco. He has also developed 38 All-Big 12 selections and six Big 12 All-Freshman Team selections. His teams have continued to push the program\u2019s standard higher, setting numerous program and individual records during his eight seasons in Manhattan, including a program-high 17 conference wins in 2025 and 14 road victories in 2023.<\/p>\n
Hughes\u2019 Wildcats have consistently ranked among the nation\u2019s top lineups, highlighted by top-25 finishes in three or more offensive categories across the last six seasons. The top finishes include ninth in stolen bases in 2024, 11th in home runs in 2021, 12th in total doubles in 2026 and 13th in total walks in 2023.<\/p>\n
K-State\u2019s offense has broken the single-season home run mark twice, including a school-record 97 in 2025, as Hughes\u2019 teams have compiled the program\u2019s top five seasons in terms of home run production. On the mound, K-State posted a program-best .257 opponent batting average and set the school record for strikeouts per nine innings at 9.9 in 2021, while also establishing the single-season best with 590 strikeouts in 2024.<\/p>\n
The Wildcats continued to rewrite the record book in a variety of areas under Hughes in 2026, including eight home runs against SIUE on March 8 to establish a new single-game mark. K-State scored 20 runs at Houston on March 13, the most ever scored in a conference opener, while finishing with a program-high eight run-rule victories. On April 12, the pitching staff struck out a program-record 23 batters against Oklahoma State.<\/p>\n
Individually, Dylan Phillips established the program\u2019s career home run record with 44 from 2019-22, while Kennedy set the single-season mark with 20 home runs in 2026. Brendan Jones tied the single-season walks record with 55 in 2024, while Wicks established program-bests for both career strikeouts (230) and single-season strikeouts (118) in 2021.<\/p>\n
Beyond the field, Hughes has made a lasting commitment to serving the Manhattan community, with his 19 Ways initiative becoming a staple of K-State baseball. In seven years, K-State baseball\u2019s community service initiative has raised more than $400,000 for College Baseball vs. Cancer, splitting funds evenly between pediatric brain cancer research and the Oklahoma Children\u2019s Hospital in Oklahoma City. During the 2025-26 academic year, the Wildcats finished No. 1 among all men\u2019s Division I teams in community engagement.<\/p>\n
Now entering his 30th year as a collegiate head coach, Hughes has built a remarkable resume of sustained success, with 26 winning seasons, including seven at the helm of K-State baseball. Across stops at Trinity (1997-98), Boston College (1999-2006), Virginia Tech (2007-13), Oklahoma (2014-17) and K-State (2019-present), Hughes has amassed 882 career victories \u2014 the 11th-most among active Division I Power 4 coaches \u2014 and is the only active coach to lead four Power 4 programs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kansas State baseball head coach Pete Hughes has agreed to a contract extension through the 2031 season, K-State…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":826099,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2288],"tags":[5,2313,9520,19,2310,2328,2304,2318,2308,2319,4,2305,2303,100403],"class_list":["post-826098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb-postseason","tag-baseball","tag-baseball-playoffs-and-champions","tag-kansas-state-wildcats","tag-major-league-baseball","tag-major-league-baseball-competitions","tag-major-league-baseball-playoffs","tag-major-league-baseball-postseason","tag-major-league-baseball-seasons","tag-major-league-baseball-teams","tag-major-league-baseball-teams-seasons","tag-mlb","tag-mlb-playoffs","tag-mlb-postseason","tag-pete-hughes"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/117416248135449232","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=826098"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826098\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/826099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=826098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=826098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=826098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}