‘This Place Has Blessed Me’
Jan 30, 2026 | Baseball, Sports Extra
By: D. Scott Fritchen
It's 9:03 a.m. as Cayden Phillips begins to talk. He has a coaching staff meeting in 57 minutes at Tointon Family Stadium, but time isn't of the essence — not when you're recalling the start of the journey, that kid in Amarillo, Texas, who had no idea what was in store; not when you're recounting the drive up Interstate-35 and on to the Little Apple, the friendliness of coaches and players — the vibe — so contagious that they feel like old friends; and not when four years with the Kansas State baseball program nearly turns into five, except for the tug of a lifetime, the whisper inside his head, that it is, in fact, time to embark on the next chapter, so raw, as Phillips sniffles into his phone, wondering what those final words might be to K-State head coach Pete Hughes, who took Phillips in like a father, built him into a Big 12 Conference catcher.
Yes, after Phillips' eight-month stint as a graduate assistant and catchers coach following his Spring 2025 graduation, he will board that flight to West Palm, Florida, on February 10 — just before K-State leaves for its season opener in Arizona — and the 23-year-old Phillips will begin his new professional baseball career as the complex catching coach for the Washington Nationals.
"My final words? I'm going to cry, I'll tell you that much," Phillips says. "What I have to say won't even be enough to cover what I owe to Kansas State baseball. The people here took me in, grew me into a man and taught me how to do it the right way, and I couldn't be any more grateful. It's unbelievable. Manhattan is truly like Amarillo — a smaller place, a family place, and people care here, and that's so special to me. My whole life, I drove from Amarillo to Dallas to play baseball in a big city, and in college, I end up playing baseball in Manhattan, Kansas.
"And it's a beautiful thing."
Phillips flips to the present. A motor cranking along on the baseball field outside his window at Tointon Family Stadium demands his attention.
"I'm looking outside, and we have a snowblower absolutely going to work on the field," he says, "so that's good news."
The 10:00 a.m. weekly staff meeting consists of housekeeping, reviewing to-do lists, discussing scouting reports, and "talking about our guys."
"We go down the roster, talk about what they're doing, what we see them working on," Phillips says, "and what they need to work on."
About a month after K-State ended its 2025 season with a second-straight NCAA Regional appearance, Phillips jumped on board to lend his expertise as a four-year letterman with current K-State catchers — a job that was a long time coming.
"After my sophomore year at K-State, during my exit meeting, Coach Hughes told me, 'Cayden, you're going to work for me one day,'" Phillips says. "I just looked at him like, 'Oh, that's interesting.' Then he started to give me hell about it. As we went through my senior year, my exit meeting came around, and Coach Hughes said, 'Dude, are you not going to work for me next year?' I said, 'Dude, I said I wanted to.' He said, 'Dude, I thought you shut me down.'
"It was a set plan all along. Coach Hughes just wanted to hear me say it."
Phillips is a 6-foot-4, 205-pound, red-haired, beard-wearing dynamo who enjoys hunting, fishing and golfing, and owns a smile that fills the room. Last season, he made 27 appearances as a catcher and had 95 putouts, a 1.000 fielding percentage, and he threw out six guys who tried to steal a base against him. Phillips also hit .216 with two doubles, two home runs, and four RBI to go along with eight runs scored, and he had a .356 on-base percentage, and he slugged .432.
Of all the many intricacies that Phillips preaches to his two primary catchers for the 2026 season — senior returning starter Bear Madliak and graduate student Shea McGahan (previously with Southeast Missouri State) — a couple stand out: 1) Have a short memory, and 2) Let your body play.
"The most fun thing is being in on every play," Phillips says. "There's exhaustion and a certain mental capacity that goes into catching. One pitch can win or lose a game as a catcher and every pitch has to be locked in like it's that one pitch. The hardest thing to do as a catcher is truly buy into it in your brain and not just your body that every pitch matters — how you catch a ball. How you do one thing is how you do everything.
"When we played Wichita State, Tanner Duke threw a breaking ball off of a guy's bat and I jumped up and caught the ball in midair. 'What did you just do?' they asked. I said, 'I have no idea.' I saw the video after the game. I didn't remember it. It was just a special time in the game where there was such a level of being locked-in and a certain determination where maybe my brain wasn't there, and it was just my body playing."
So later today, after the coaching staff meeting, Phillips and the K-State catchers will begin their routine. It consists of eight tennis balls and one golf ball. They'll perform backhand flips with those tennis balls to warm up the hands and eyes, then they'll put the tennis ball deep into their hand to make the hand a little bit smaller, an exercise that demands focus and softens up the hand. That's followed up with catching work on the jugs machine. Two days prior, the guys had trouble blocking the ball, so they worked through it. Another day, they had trouble throwing, so they worked on it. Phillips strives to put the catchers in as many game-like and uncomfortable situations as possible. Why?
"Because at the end of the day, we don't know where that pitcher is going to throw it," Phillps says. "We'd like to say we do, and if they throw it there, heck yeah, but what are we going to do when that pitch isn't exactly where it needs to go? How good can we be with a miss?"
Oh, there was a time that Phillips found that groove, though. He found it because he knew his pitchers so well. Sometimes, through the days, weeks, months and years, that electric pitcher-catcher connection erupts and crackles, when everything slows down, and wire-to-wire all is in sync — the pitcher, the ball, and the catcher. Only a veteran-trained eye can fully digest the craft, the art, of two players in harmony, 60-feet, 6-inches away, yet as one unstoppable force, the machine, the body, taking over in all its beauty.
"The relationship between a pitcher and catcher, a certain level that gets going in a game when a pitcher, catcher and defense all work together, and you're completely bought into each other," Phillips says. "I tell our guys, 'There's a special moment when you and him get on the same page and you know exactly what he's going to throw before he throws it.' You can't explain it.
"I was that way with Ty Ruhl, my roommate for three years. We just had that bond."
That bond would've never formed had Phillips, the 14th-rated catcher in the state of Texas and 2021 Texas 5A All-State Team member, never made his way to Manhattan.
The kid was dumbfounded, understand, as the high school junior, on his way to a music concert in Amarillo, took a phone call from a Dallas Baptist — the first team to offer Phillips a scholarship. The Dallas Baptist coach said, "COVID happened, and there are going to be guys coming back. We don't see you playing as a freshman." Phillips, who had already committed to Dallas Baptist, drove home and had a long, hard, brutal talk with his parents, Kevin and Kim, then he got his transfer papers signed, and he called K-State associate head coach Austin Wates, who had recruited Phillips to Manhattan. Turns out the Wildcats still had an opening for a catcher on their roster.
Four days later, Phillips moved to the Little Apple.
"I haven't left since," Phillips says. "I mean, I came here and said, 'This is where I want to be.'"
Phillips, as with so many young student-athletes, hit a bump in the road, questioned his abilities early on, and wondered if he'd ever make it in major collegiate baseball.
"I went into my exit meeting my freshman year and said, 'Coach, you know, I don't know if I can do this anymore,'" Phillips says. "He asked me, 'You thinking about hitting the portal?' I said, 'No, sir.' He said, 'What do you mean?' I said, 'I won't play anyplace else, but I might be done with baseball.' Coach looked at me and said, 'You know, dude, we're going to get through this.'"
Phillips pauses.
"I owe everything to Coach Hughes and those guys, and there was no other place I wanted to be than here," he says. "I believed Coach Hughes because he had never let me down, I'll tell you that. You know what? Getting here and staying through the hard times and good times, it all just goes back to those guys. They took me in and took care of me and here we are."
Yes, here we are, and Phillips was a player on one of the best four-year stretches in K-State baseball history. From going 29-29 in 2022, K-State went 35-24 in 2023, then 35-26 with a Super Regional appearance in 2024, and finally 32-26 with a second-straight NCAA Regional appearance in 2025. The Wildcats went 17-13 in the Big 12 last season for their most conference wins in history.
"It's truly special, and it's one of the reasons I wanted to stay around is because of the special culture and special people and we have it going on," Phillips says. "When you have great people and a great culture you get great kids who truly buy into that and special, special things can happen. Coach always says, 'We're going to set the standard.' Every year I've been here and as we've grown and as new people have come in, the standard has been set higher every year. That's tremendously important.
"It's not just a goal — we're always trying to improve. It comes down to culture and doing things the right way and at a high level — academics, community service, practice, weights, treatment. When guys come in and truly soak in our culture, they increase their potential tremendously."
Coming off its third straight 30-win season, K-State returns 21 players, including 17 letterwinners, from last season. Key returners include everyday starters AJ Evasco, Dee Kennedy, Bear Madliak and Shintaro Inoue. Evasco, who earned D1Baseball Freshman All-America honors, turned in a record-breaking debut season by setting K-State freshman records with 11 home runs and 52 RBI.
The journey through the 2026 campaign fires up when K-State faces Iowa on Opening Day on February 13 in the MLB Desert Invitational in Scottsdale, Arizona. The Wildcats' four-day event will also feature games against UConn, Penn State and Air Force. 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.
Think K-State can make some noise again in 2026?
"I sure do," Phillips says. "Being a part of the NCAA Regional teams these past two years, including the Super Regional, we have a lot of pieces on the table with this team, man. I'm not saying we didn't in previous years, but it's a dangerous weapon to have so many Swiss army knives and guys who can do so many things. We have a bunch of guys at every position. It's deep and competitive. That's what makes us special.
"Guys are competing all the way up to the first day, and they'll be competing the whole time they're in there and it only makes us better."
And Phillips will keep track of all the excitement from afar.
Last week, K-State recruiting coordinator Ryan Connolly approached Phillips as he tossed baseballs to little kids at a kids' camp in the K-State indoor baseball facility.
"I have a buddy that works with the Washington Nationals, and they're looking for a catching guy," Connolly told Phillips.
That night, Phillips spoke with the Nationals for the first time. Then he spoke with four different members of the Nationals organization over the next three days.
Then the deal was done.
"I'll be the complex catching coach for the complex in West Palm, Florida," Phillips says. "Their minor league complex in West Palm, that's where all their guys go through spring training, so all the teams will roll through there, and as the year goes on, the complex keeps running for guys. There's a Florida complex league. Maybe they're first-year guys or rehab guys, just all sorts of guys, and they host them to do fundamental things before they get sent out to a minor league team or a Major League team.
"It's a year-around job. We start actual stuff on the 15th. The first day of games is the 20th. Throughout the year, there might be opportunities for me to go out to an affiliate team and work with their catchers for the Nationals or to fly out to the Dominican Republic. I asked one of the representatives with the Nationals, 'What's the future look like after this job?' He said, 'You're opening pandora's box. The opportunities are limitless.' I'd like to come back to college at some point. I just think there's a certain level of getting kids to do something a singular way that's awesome, but the opportunities that the MLB provides, maybe an assistant coach or a manager.
"A cool deal would be to be a catching coach."
Time draws near. Soon, Phillips will be immersed in a K-State coaches staff meeting. Then he'll be with his catchers. In 12 days, he'll be in Florida — the next exciting spot in his journey through baseball. He's keeping his feet planted where they are.
And forgive him as he sniffles on the phone, struggling to put it all together, and struggling to put it all into proper perspective.
"It was a crazy ride getting to K-State, and now that I'm here, at this spot, the first thing that scares me the most, and the hardest thing to do, is leaving this place," he says. "This place has blessed me. I really don't know where I'd be today had Coach Hughes not called me one day and brought me to Manhattan.
"The biggest thing I've learned is that you never know where you're going to go, you know? I was in Amarillo as a little kid, and never in my life did I think I'd be at K-State, and now I'm headed to Florida. The dreams — those dreams weren't even fathomable as a kid to where I am right now."
He pauses. And sniffles.
"The coaching staff here," he says, "there's no more special place and no better group of guys. They took me in and took care of me… And here we are."
It's 9:03 a.m. as Cayden Phillips begins to talk. He has a coaching staff meeting in 57 minutes at Tointon Family Stadium, but time isn't of the essence — not when you're recalling the start of the journey, that kid in Amarillo, Texas, who had no idea what was in store; not when you're recounting the drive up Interstate-35 and on to the Little Apple, the friendliness of coaches and players — the vibe — so contagious that they feel like old friends; and not when four years with the Kansas State baseball program nearly turns into five, except for the tug of a lifetime, the whisper inside his head, that it is, in fact, time to embark on the next chapter, so raw, as Phillips sniffles into his phone, wondering what those final words might be to K-State head coach Pete Hughes, who took Phillips in like a father, built him into a Big 12 Conference catcher.
Yes, after Phillips' eight-month stint as a graduate assistant and catchers coach following his Spring 2025 graduation, he will board that flight to West Palm, Florida, on February 10 — just before K-State leaves for its season opener in Arizona — and the 23-year-old Phillips will begin his new professional baseball career as the complex catching coach for the Washington Nationals.
"My final words? I'm going to cry, I'll tell you that much," Phillips says. "What I have to say won't even be enough to cover what I owe to Kansas State baseball. The people here took me in, grew me into a man and taught me how to do it the right way, and I couldn't be any more grateful. It's unbelievable. Manhattan is truly like Amarillo — a smaller place, a family place, and people care here, and that's so special to me. My whole life, I drove from Amarillo to Dallas to play baseball in a big city, and in college, I end up playing baseball in Manhattan, Kansas.
"And it's a beautiful thing."
Phillips flips to the present. A motor cranking along on the baseball field outside his window at Tointon Family Stadium demands his attention.
"I'm looking outside, and we have a snowblower absolutely going to work on the field," he says, "so that's good news."
The 10:00 a.m. weekly staff meeting consists of housekeeping, reviewing to-do lists, discussing scouting reports, and "talking about our guys."
"We go down the roster, talk about what they're doing, what we see them working on," Phillips says, "and what they need to work on."
About a month after K-State ended its 2025 season with a second-straight NCAA Regional appearance, Phillips jumped on board to lend his expertise as a four-year letterman with current K-State catchers — a job that was a long time coming.
"After my sophomore year at K-State, during my exit meeting, Coach Hughes told me, 'Cayden, you're going to work for me one day,'" Phillips says. "I just looked at him like, 'Oh, that's interesting.' Then he started to give me hell about it. As we went through my senior year, my exit meeting came around, and Coach Hughes said, 'Dude, are you not going to work for me next year?' I said, 'Dude, I said I wanted to.' He said, 'Dude, I thought you shut me down.'
"It was a set plan all along. Coach Hughes just wanted to hear me say it."
Phillips is a 6-foot-4, 205-pound, red-haired, beard-wearing dynamo who enjoys hunting, fishing and golfing, and owns a smile that fills the room. Last season, he made 27 appearances as a catcher and had 95 putouts, a 1.000 fielding percentage, and he threw out six guys who tried to steal a base against him. Phillips also hit .216 with two doubles, two home runs, and four RBI to go along with eight runs scored, and he had a .356 on-base percentage, and he slugged .432.
Of all the many intricacies that Phillips preaches to his two primary catchers for the 2026 season — senior returning starter Bear Madliak and graduate student Shea McGahan (previously with Southeast Missouri State) — a couple stand out: 1) Have a short memory, and 2) Let your body play.
"The most fun thing is being in on every play," Phillips says. "There's exhaustion and a certain mental capacity that goes into catching. One pitch can win or lose a game as a catcher and every pitch has to be locked in like it's that one pitch. The hardest thing to do as a catcher is truly buy into it in your brain and not just your body that every pitch matters — how you catch a ball. How you do one thing is how you do everything.
"When we played Wichita State, Tanner Duke threw a breaking ball off of a guy's bat and I jumped up and caught the ball in midair. 'What did you just do?' they asked. I said, 'I have no idea.' I saw the video after the game. I didn't remember it. It was just a special time in the game where there was such a level of being locked-in and a certain determination where maybe my brain wasn't there, and it was just my body playing."
So later today, after the coaching staff meeting, Phillips and the K-State catchers will begin their routine. It consists of eight tennis balls and one golf ball. They'll perform backhand flips with those tennis balls to warm up the hands and eyes, then they'll put the tennis ball deep into their hand to make the hand a little bit smaller, an exercise that demands focus and softens up the hand. That's followed up with catching work on the jugs machine. Two days prior, the guys had trouble blocking the ball, so they worked through it. Another day, they had trouble throwing, so they worked on it. Phillips strives to put the catchers in as many game-like and uncomfortable situations as possible. Why?
"Because at the end of the day, we don't know where that pitcher is going to throw it," Phillps says. "We'd like to say we do, and if they throw it there, heck yeah, but what are we going to do when that pitch isn't exactly where it needs to go? How good can we be with a miss?"
Oh, there was a time that Phillips found that groove, though. He found it because he knew his pitchers so well. Sometimes, through the days, weeks, months and years, that electric pitcher-catcher connection erupts and crackles, when everything slows down, and wire-to-wire all is in sync — the pitcher, the ball, and the catcher. Only a veteran-trained eye can fully digest the craft, the art, of two players in harmony, 60-feet, 6-inches away, yet as one unstoppable force, the machine, the body, taking over in all its beauty.
"The relationship between a pitcher and catcher, a certain level that gets going in a game when a pitcher, catcher and defense all work together, and you're completely bought into each other," Phillips says. "I tell our guys, 'There's a special moment when you and him get on the same page and you know exactly what he's going to throw before he throws it.' You can't explain it.
"I was that way with Ty Ruhl, my roommate for three years. We just had that bond."
That bond would've never formed had Phillips, the 14th-rated catcher in the state of Texas and 2021 Texas 5A All-State Team member, never made his way to Manhattan.
The kid was dumbfounded, understand, as the high school junior, on his way to a music concert in Amarillo, took a phone call from a Dallas Baptist — the first team to offer Phillips a scholarship. The Dallas Baptist coach said, "COVID happened, and there are going to be guys coming back. We don't see you playing as a freshman." Phillips, who had already committed to Dallas Baptist, drove home and had a long, hard, brutal talk with his parents, Kevin and Kim, then he got his transfer papers signed, and he called K-State associate head coach Austin Wates, who had recruited Phillips to Manhattan. Turns out the Wildcats still had an opening for a catcher on their roster.
Four days later, Phillips moved to the Little Apple.
"I haven't left since," Phillips says. "I mean, I came here and said, 'This is where I want to be.'"
Phillips, as with so many young student-athletes, hit a bump in the road, questioned his abilities early on, and wondered if he'd ever make it in major collegiate baseball.
"I went into my exit meeting my freshman year and said, 'Coach, you know, I don't know if I can do this anymore,'" Phillips says. "He asked me, 'You thinking about hitting the portal?' I said, 'No, sir.' He said, 'What do you mean?' I said, 'I won't play anyplace else, but I might be done with baseball.' Coach looked at me and said, 'You know, dude, we're going to get through this.'"
Phillips pauses.
"I owe everything to Coach Hughes and those guys, and there was no other place I wanted to be than here," he says. "I believed Coach Hughes because he had never let me down, I'll tell you that. You know what? Getting here and staying through the hard times and good times, it all just goes back to those guys. They took me in and took care of me and here we are."
Yes, here we are, and Phillips was a player on one of the best four-year stretches in K-State baseball history. From going 29-29 in 2022, K-State went 35-24 in 2023, then 35-26 with a Super Regional appearance in 2024, and finally 32-26 with a second-straight NCAA Regional appearance in 2025. The Wildcats went 17-13 in the Big 12 last season for their most conference wins in history.
"It's truly special, and it's one of the reasons I wanted to stay around is because of the special culture and special people and we have it going on," Phillips says. "When you have great people and a great culture you get great kids who truly buy into that and special, special things can happen. Coach always says, 'We're going to set the standard.' Every year I've been here and as we've grown and as new people have come in, the standard has been set higher every year. That's tremendously important.
"It's not just a goal — we're always trying to improve. It comes down to culture and doing things the right way and at a high level — academics, community service, practice, weights, treatment. When guys come in and truly soak in our culture, they increase their potential tremendously."
Coming off its third straight 30-win season, K-State returns 21 players, including 17 letterwinners, from last season. Key returners include everyday starters AJ Evasco, Dee Kennedy, Bear Madliak and Shintaro Inoue. Evasco, who earned D1Baseball Freshman All-America honors, turned in a record-breaking debut season by setting K-State freshman records with 11 home runs and 52 RBI.
The journey through the 2026 campaign fires up when K-State faces Iowa on Opening Day on February 13 in the MLB Desert Invitational in Scottsdale, Arizona. The Wildcats' four-day event will also feature games against UConn, Penn State and Air Force. 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.
Think K-State can make some noise again in 2026?
"I sure do," Phillips says. "Being a part of the NCAA Regional teams these past two years, including the Super Regional, we have a lot of pieces on the table with this team, man. I'm not saying we didn't in previous years, but it's a dangerous weapon to have so many Swiss army knives and guys who can do so many things. We have a bunch of guys at every position. It's deep and competitive. That's what makes us special.
"Guys are competing all the way up to the first day, and they'll be competing the whole time they're in there and it only makes us better."
And Phillips will keep track of all the excitement from afar.
Last week, K-State recruiting coordinator Ryan Connolly approached Phillips as he tossed baseballs to little kids at a kids' camp in the K-State indoor baseball facility.
"I have a buddy that works with the Washington Nationals, and they're looking for a catching guy," Connolly told Phillips.
That night, Phillips spoke with the Nationals for the first time. Then he spoke with four different members of the Nationals organization over the next three days.
Then the deal was done.
"I'll be the complex catching coach for the complex in West Palm, Florida," Phillips says. "Their minor league complex in West Palm, that's where all their guys go through spring training, so all the teams will roll through there, and as the year goes on, the complex keeps running for guys. There's a Florida complex league. Maybe they're first-year guys or rehab guys, just all sorts of guys, and they host them to do fundamental things before they get sent out to a minor league team or a Major League team.
"It's a year-around job. We start actual stuff on the 15th. The first day of games is the 20th. Throughout the year, there might be opportunities for me to go out to an affiliate team and work with their catchers for the Nationals or to fly out to the Dominican Republic. I asked one of the representatives with the Nationals, 'What's the future look like after this job?' He said, 'You're opening pandora's box. The opportunities are limitless.' I'd like to come back to college at some point. I just think there's a certain level of getting kids to do something a singular way that's awesome, but the opportunities that the MLB provides, maybe an assistant coach or a manager.
"A cool deal would be to be a catching coach."
Time draws near. Soon, Phillips will be immersed in a K-State coaches staff meeting. Then he'll be with his catchers. In 12 days, he'll be in Florida — the next exciting spot in his journey through baseball. He's keeping his feet planted where they are.
And forgive him as he sniffles on the phone, struggling to put it all together, and struggling to put it all into proper perspective.
"It was a crazy ride getting to K-State, and now that I'm here, at this spot, the first thing that scares me the most, and the hardest thing to do, is leaving this place," he says. "This place has blessed me. I really don't know where I'd be today had Coach Hughes not called me one day and brought me to Manhattan.
"The biggest thing I've learned is that you never know where you're going to go, you know? I was in Amarillo as a little kid, and never in my life did I think I'd be at K-State, and now I'm headed to Florida. The dreams — those dreams weren't even fathomable as a kid to where I am right now."
He pauses. And sniffles.
"The coaching staff here," he says, "there's no more special place and no better group of guys. They took me in and took care of me… And here we are."
Players Mentioned
RHP
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INF
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