Kansas State shortstop Dee Kennedy has officially taken the next step in his baseball career. The Fort Worth, Texas native was selected by the St. Louis Cardinals in the fourth round with the 114th overall pick of the 2026 Major League Baseball Draft.
Kennedy’s path to the pros was paved by a dominant 2026 senior season where he emerged as one of the premier power-speed threats in collegiate baseball. Over 57 games this past spring, he posted a .357 batting average, a .461 on-base percentage and a .733 slugging percentage. He led the K-State offense at the shortstop position and with 79 hits, 70 runs scored and 69 RBIs, while converting 22-of-26 stolen base attempts.
Kennedy’s 2026 campaign rewrote several chapters of the program’s history books, defined by milestones that attracted heavy attention from major league scouts. With his 20th blast of the year, Kennedy broke the Kansas State single-season home run record. By pairing those 20 home runs with 22 stolen bases. He also became just the fifth player in Big 12 Conference history to record a 20-home run, 20-stolen base season, a feat achieved by only four players nationwide in 2026.
His high-level production earned him First Team All-Big 12 honors and third-team All-American recognition from D1Baseball. Additionally, his 40 total extra-base hits, including 17 doubles and three triples, ranked second all-time in the K-State single-season record books.
Beyond his individual regular-season records in 2026, Kennedy’s legacy in Manhattan is closely tied to the program’s recent postseason heights, most notably the team’s historic 2024 postseason run during his freshman season. In 2024, the Wildcats captured the Fayetteville Regional championship by upsetting national seed Arkansas, launching the program into the NCAA Super Regionals for just the second time in school history. Though K-State ultimately fell to Virginia in the 2024 Charlottesville Super Regional, that tournament run set a new standard for the program and laid the groundwork for Kennedy’s development into an All-American draft prospect.
With his selection, Kennedy becomes the latest in a growing line of Wildcats drafted under the current coaching staff, including head coach Pete Hughes. Kennedy is expected to bypass any remaining collegiate eligibility to sign with the Cardinals organization and report to their minor league affiliate system later this summer.
