It’s no secret around the baseball offices at Hi Corbett Field: The 2026 Arizona Wildcats will go as far as Owen Kramkowski and Smith Bailey can take them.
Arizona enters the '26 season, which begins Friday vs. Stanford in Surprise, with a strong hand. The Wildcats have a pair of aces.
Kramkowski, who attended Walden Grove High School, is coming off a breakout sophomore season in which he ascended from relative unknown to Friday-night starter for a College World Series squad. He finished with nine wins, tied for second most in the Big 12, and 90 strikeouts, which ranked eighth in the conference.
Bailey secured a spot in the weekend rotation as a true freshman and started three postseason games that ended in clinching celebrations: the Big 12 Tournament title game, the Eugene Regional final and Game 3 of the Chapel Hill Super Regional.
The tall, hard-throwing right-handers enter this season buoyed by those experiences. They’re ready to be even better.
D1Baseball ranked both among its top 40 starting pitchers heading into 2026. Only six other programs had two in the top 40.
Arizona pitchers Owen Kramkowski, left, and Smith Bailey pose for a photo prior to the team's practice session, Feb. 3, 2026, at Hi Corbett Field.
“We’re gonna lean heavily on Owen Kramkowski and Smith Bailey early in the season,” UA coach Chip Hale said.
Hale and his staff are still figuring some things out, including the starters beyond the top two, the back end of the bullpen in light of Tony Pluta's season-ending elbow injury and the composition of the lineup. They know exactly what they have at the front of the rotation, where Kramkowski and Bailey should provide a bevy of quality starts.
The only real mystery, at least entering the final weekend of preseason prep, was which of the two aces would pitch first in a given series. It’s the proverbial good problem to have. There is no wrong answer.
Heading into that weekend, Hale said Kramkowski and Bailey were “neck and neck.” Kramkowski has more experience as the Friday-night guy, having moved into that role in early May. Bailey was Arizona’s No. 3 starter for most of last season, so he’d be moving up two notches.
Both want to pitch on Friday nights. But both understand it’s not their call. They’re more focused on supporting each other — they’ve become close friends who play catch on the field and video games off it — and doing their part for the team.
“Obviously we're both shooting for a role,” Kramkowski said. “But at the end of the day, we're teammates.”
“It'd be cool,” Bailey said. “But ... I’m fine with whatever. I just want to be a guy that can go out there and compete.”
Kram’s 'big jump'
Kramkowski was unable to compete, at least on the mound, for almost half of his high school career.
A rising prospect at Walden Grove, Kramkowski was set to start against rival Sahuarita on March 28, 2022, about midway through his junior season. Kramkowski lasted just one pitch, suffering an avulsion fracture in his elbow that would prevent him from pitching in games until the end of his senior year.
Arizona starter Owen Kramkowski deals against Oklahoma State in the fourth inning on April 12, 2025, at Hi Corbett Field.
Kramkowski was throwing harder than his still-growing body could handle. In a Perfect Game scouting report posted in 2021, Kramkowski is described as having a 6-foot-2, 145-pound frame.
His high school coach, Murray Hicks, knew Kramkowski was a superb athlete whose body would fill out — eventually.
“He just started throwing crazy hard,” Hicks said in a phone interview. “He threw too hard. His bones weren’t developed yet.”
Kramkowski had just committed to Arizona. His travel club, eXposure Baseball, posted that news on March 27 — the day before the injury occurred.
“But to Chip’s credit,” said Hicks, who was teammates with Hale at the UA in the mid-1980s, “they stuck with him.”
Kramkowski barely pitched as a Wildcat freshman — 1⅓ ineffective innings — as he continued to build up his body, strength and velocity. He pitched 28 innings for the Ocean State Waves of the New England Collegiate Baseball League in the summer of 2024 — one fewer than the previous three springs combined.
Arizona right-hander Owen Kramkowski beats his chest during his start against ASU on April 5, 2025, at Phoenix Municipal Stadium.
Former UA pitching coach Kevin Vance liked what he saw that fall. By the time the 2025 season began, Kramkowski — now 6-3 and about 170 pounds — had earned a spot in the weekend rotation. But even he couldn’t envision what was to come.
“I don't want to say unexpected, but it was a big jump from my freshman year,” said Kramkowski, who ended up making 18 starts and throwing 92 innings. “It was a lot of learning. It was a fun year for me.
“Looking back on it, I'm really happy with how it went. Because if you would have told me after my freshman year that's how it would have ended up, I would have thought it was a little crazy.”
The season didn’t start well. Kramkowski couldn’t get out of the first inning against Clemson, yielding seven runs while recording only two outs. Then he found a rhythm, winning three of his next four starts.
Kramkowski nearly pitched a complete game at Arizona State on April 5, threw seven shutout innings in his next start against Oklahoma State and had several other strong performances — including seven innings of one-run ball in the Eugene Regional opener vs. Cal Poly.
But he had some rough outings, too, including the Super Regional opener at North Carolina in which he was tagged for eight runs in 1⅓ innings.
Kramkowski is striving to be more consistent as a junior. Already an elite strike thrower — Kramkowski walked just 18 batters — he’s working on a changeup to complement his upper-90s fastball, sinker, sweeper and cutter.
“He has room to grow in the poise category, in the leader category,” Hale said. “His stuff is tremendous. I think everybody from pro scouts to us, his coaches, see that; his stuff is good enough to be a big-league prospect. I think he'll grow a little bit more in the poise area and be able to handle some things in-game that he wasn't able to last year.”
Bailey’s breathing
Bailey handled everything thrown his way. He seemed, at least on the surface, to be immune from pressure.
Bailey authored quality starts (six-plus innings, three or fewer earned runs) in four of his final five appearances. The only one that wasn’t — 5⅓ innings of one-run ball vs. TCU in the Big 12 Championship Game.
Arizona’s Smith Bailey delivers a pitch vs. TCU in the Big 12 Baseball Championship title game on May 24, 2025, at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas.
In three NCAA Tournament starts — including an elimination game in Omaha — Bailey yielded just five runs in 18 innings. He gave the Wildcats a chance to win in every outing.
“I'd love to say we coached that into him,” Hale said. “But he just walked in here that way.”
Bailey attributes his unwavering poise to advice from his mother, Kimberly, a marriage and family therapist in the Phoenix area.
“No matter what's going on,” Smith said, “just control your breath.”
Kimberly gave most of the credit to her son.
“Smith figured out how to start focusing on what he could control,” she said via email. “He could control his breathing and his body, and with that came control over his thinking and his effort. I have seen him working daily on how he can control focus and refocus and get back on track with what he is visualizing as a desired outcome.
Arizona right-hander Smith Bailey delivers a pitch at Houston on May 17, 2025. Bailey allowed only one run in six innings as the Wildcats defeated the Cougars 8-1.
“When pressure rises, you know he is settling back into what he has control of and what will likely come if he focuses on that aspect.”
It also helps that Bailey stands 6-5, weighs about 220 pounds (up from “205, maybe, on a good day” last year), has hit 97 mph on the radar gun and can throw any of five pitches for strikes at any point in the count.
Those attributes made Bailey a pro prospect coming out of Mountain Ridge High School in Glendale — Perfect Game’s No. 1-ranked righty from the state in the class of 2024. He elected to attend Arizona instead, citing his admiration for the coaching staff and desire to develop. Bailey considered the UA “the smartest opportunity for me to grow as a person and a player.”
He was particularly impressed with Vance and his assistant, John DeRouin — neither of whom is with Arizona anymore. Vance left in June to become the head coach at San Diego State. DeRouin, who’d been named his successor, took a job with the New York Mets in December.
Bailey views the opportunity to work with a third pitching coach, Sean Kenny, in less than a year as a positive.
“This change in coaches really helped me grow as a person,” Bailey said. “You could be going from high-A to double-A and you have a brand-new coach. So I think this was a good thing for me to see and experience.”
Hale promoted DeRouin in the interest of continuity; the move made it less likely that a pitching standout such as Bailey would transfer.
Bailey said he never considered transferring — even though other programs undoubtedly dangled lucrative offers to his representatives.
“I had no intentions of leaving,” Bailey said.
The way he sees it, the path to a big payday is to go “somewhere where you can really develop and then hopefully get drafted.” Arizona remains that place for Bailey, even with a new coach in charge of the pitching staff.
Kenny has tutored multiple MLB Draft picks — including Emerson Hancock at Georgia, who became the sixth overall pick in 2020 and now pitches for the Seattle Mariners. Kenny sees similarities between Hancock and Bailey beyond their almost identical builds (Hancock, also a right-hander, is listed at 6-4, 213).
“Smith is very much like him,” Kenny said. “Emerson was just an absolute crazy person to his routine. You could not get him off of it. It was a healthy routine. And that's how Smith is.
“I don't talk to Smith much. I just say, ‘How you feeling today, man?’ Those are the best players.”
Kramkowski is also a creature of habit. It’s another way in which Arizona’s dynamic duo jibes.
