By his own admission, Kansas shortstop Tyson LeBlanc has always been the type of baseball player who hits for average.
And even after he jumped from junior college powerhouse LSU-Eunice to Big 12 baseball during the offseason, LeBlanc has held strong to that part of his game.
He currently leads the Jayhawks in hitting with a .337 average in 193 at-bats over 48 starts.
But there’s another area in which he leads the team that has been both a bit surprising and the next natural step in his progression as a player.
Power numbers.
LeBlanc entered the week leading the Jayhawks (37-11 overall, 20-4 in Big 12 play) in home runs, too, with 16 so far this season, which puts him in 6th place in the Big 12 Conference.
The cool thing about LeBlanc’s power numbers — he also leads the team with 49 RBIs — is that they have not been the result of some massive plan to bulk up and become a dude who hunts the big fly.
Instead, they’ve come on the heels of him simply fine-tuning his approach while focusing on the one thing he does best — win.
“It’s all about winning. The next step is to win. Win the Big 12, win the Big 12 tournament, win a regional, win a (super regional) and then, obviously, go to Omaha (for the College World Series) and win that, too.”
— KU shortstop Tyson LeBlanc
“We’re always looking for guys that know how to win,” KU assistant coach Tyler Hancock said. “And he was a no-brainer. He’s an unbelievable teammate. He’s a tremendous worker. He is awesome.”
So much so, in fact, that KU recruited him after both his freshman and sophomore seasons at LSUE.
LeBlanc’s baseball career is rooted in victories.
In high school, at North Vermilion High School in Maurice, Louisiana, he won a state title as a sophomore, finished state-runner-up his junior year and lost in the quarterfinals as a senior.
From there, he said yes to the one scholarship offer he received in high school and went on to help LSU Eunice win a juco national championship as a freshman.
In Year 2 at the Louisiana junior college, the Bengals lost five games all season, giving LeBlanc a two-year record of 109-13.
“I knew what I was getting myself into going to LSUE,” LeBlanc told R1S1 Sports during a recent sit-down interview in the KU dugout. “I knew that they didn’t lose. But the biggest takeaway for me there was I grew up a lot, and that was the best decision I’ve ever made, because I don’t know if I was ready for the big stage yet. Those two years changed me.”
While the wins and losses were great, the biggest way LeBlanc grew at Eunice was within his own game.
See, in high school, he was an elite hitter who almost never struck out. That wasn’t always the case at LSUE. And having to learn how to work through new and tougher challenges as his game and career evolved helped get him ready for the move to Kansas.
“I learned how to deal with failure,” he said.
A no-nonsense guy with great work ethic, an intense love of the game and a cool and calm demeanor, LeBlanc knew he would love KU even before he arrived.
Having grown up about 90 minutes from LSU’s campus, he already knew a little about current KU coach Dan Fitzgerald, who was an assistant with the Tigers in 2022. And once he saw firsthand how well Fitzgerald’s philosophy for building a winner meshed with his own, he knew good times were ahead.
He loved hearing that Fitzgerald and recruiting coordinator Jon Coyne targeted juco guys because he knew that, when he got here, they would all be able to bond over their shared pasts.
“I don’t think you can get closer than a juco baseball team that all lives in the same apartment complex,” LeBlanc said. “Four to a room, about 40 guys in the same building.”
He continued: “I knew what my time at juco was like. So, I figured if they surrounded me with 30 other guys that all went through that process, that’s a recipe for success. We all know what it’s like to be under-recruited or to have to work to get what we want.”
Truth be told, that reality hit LeBlanc long before he ever made it to college.
He started playing travel ball at age 7. By the time he reached age 10, he moved up a couple of grades to play with older kids and for a coach who once played at LSU.
“I learned how to practice like a pro at 10 years old,” he said. “That’s where the competitiveness kicked in because I had to learn how to compete against guys that were older and better than me. I was playing with a bunch of dudes who had already hit their growth spurts.”
Images of KU shortstop Tyson LeBlanc from his first season with the Jayhawks. [Kansas Athletics photos]
LeBlanc said that’s where getting a boost from his buddies began, and he’s been taking advantage of it every step of the way since.
“I think I’ve been very fortunate to be surrounded by a bunch of good teammates, and that’s the case here, too,” he said. “I think the main thing right now is we’re all having so much fun playing baseball. It doesn’t feel like a job coming out here. One of the coolest things is being out on the field and looking in the dugout and seeing guys who are injured and out for the year having just as much fun.”
Maybe that feeling of non-stop fun — the Jayhawks have won 10 straight, 27 of their last 30 and sit in first place in the Big 12 race — has propelled LeBlanc to tear the cover off the ball.
But you'd be mistaken if you said he's spent much time celebrating his numbers or the team's success to this point. Remember, there's still more to do and bigger goals to tackle.
Consider this comment from mid-April, shortly after the Jayhawks moved into first place in the Big 12 standings for the first time.
“The season’s not over just because we moved into first," LeBlanc said matter-of-factly.
Most of the work that led to the monster numbers he has put up so far started long before the 2026 Jayhawks ever played a real game.
“I’ve always hit for average; I hit doubles,” LeBlanc said. “But last year the doubles turned into home runs. And this year, with (strength coach) Luke Bradford in the weight room and Hancock, our hitting coach, they’ve really tapped into a part of my strength that I didn’t even know I had.”
LeBlanc’s career-high in home runs came in 58 games last year, when he hit 11, giving him double digits for the first time in his life. Now, with 16 already and a minimum of four or five weeks of ball still ahead, reaching 20+ seems realistic.
“He took a jump between his freshman and sophomore year, so we thought that was in there,” Hancock told R1S1 Sports of the pop in LeBlanc's bat. “And then we saw him in the fall and we were like, ‘OK. There’s some thump in there.’”
Added Fitzgerald: “I thought he had power and I knew he was a really good hitter. Nothing’s really surprised me about him, the more I’ve gotten to know him, because of who he is and how he works. But there’s probably a little bit more juice in there than we projected.”
Even LeBlanc admits to being “a little surprised” by the added power.
“I knew I was capable of it,” he said. “I just had to be around the right people. I’m just trying to live on the barrel. That’s the easiest way to be a successful hitter. I’m just trying to hit the ball hard, wherever it’s hit.”
Hancock tries to instill that attitude in all of his hitters, whether they're trying to hit ground balls through the right side or to hit moon shots onto the roof of KU’s McCarthy Hall, which sits 75-100 feet behind dead center field at Hoglund Ballpark.
Hancock said LeBlanc’s plate discipline when he arrived meant minimal work needed to be done to unlock more power. So, they focused on loading up at the plate and talked a lot about bat path. Other than that it was mostly, “let’s get after it and take some chances,” Hancock explained.
That mindset freed LeBlanc up and allowed him to think big in terms of goals, distance, exit velocity off the bat and trying new tricks in practice.
He's also been incredibly clutch. Seven of the nine home runs he hit during a 13-game stretch earlier this season came in the 6th inning or later.
“Unlocking that part this year, being more of a go-to guy in the later innings, I think that’s one of the coolest things in baseball," he said. "Obviously, you never turn down a home run if it’s in the 1st inning or the 7th, but most games are won in the back half and it feels good to come through there."
The take-it-as-it-comes approach and his team's willingness to stay hyper-focused on the next pitch or next at-bat rather than worrying about the bigger picture, has put the Jayhawks in a position that almost no Kansas baseball team has been in before.
They’re talking about winning the Big 12, they’re expecting to host a regional and maybe more beyond that.
LeBlanc said “winning the last possible game you can win that year is pretty special.” When asked if he thinks this KU team can do just that, he didn’t hesitate to answer.
“Oh yeah,” he said.
“It’s all about winning. The next step is to win. Win the Big 12, win the Big 12 tournament, win a regional, win a (super regional) and then, obviously, go to Omaha (for the College World Series) and win that, too.”
First things first, of course. KU plays at Creighton at 6 p.m. tonight in Omaha — site of the annual CWS, no less — and the 9th-ranked Jayhawks then will return home for a weekend series against No. 18 West Virginia, which sits in second place in the Big 12 race, 4 games behind Kansas with 6 games to play.
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