Landon Koenig remembers being in the transfer portal last summer.
He went home to May-Port CG High School and worked out at the facilities. While he was there, he talked with former May-Port Legion baseball coach Taylor Kunkel about which teams were reaching out and how the process was going.
“And he was just amazed,” Koenig said. “He was just super happy for me.”
It was hard for him not to be when the kid from Portland, N.D., — originally from the even smaller town of Page, N.D., — was getting SEC offers. Now, he’s taken it a step further and gotten drafted by the New York Mets in the eighth round.
From small-town North Dakota, on a high school co-op that dissolved in the middle of his career, to a Major League Baseball organization.
“It’s a dream come true,” Koenig said, live from Port St. Lucie, Fla., on July 15 after a day of getting acquainted with the Mets’ other draftees. “I’m pumped. I’m already down here and ready to get to work.”
Koenig grew up in Page, a town in Cass County that had a population of 190 in the 2020 census. He was a three-sport athlete, actually preferring basketball until his later high school years. He got his start at Hope-Page High School, in the nearby town of Hope (pop. 272).
At the time, Hope-Page had a co-op with Finley-Sharon.
During his sophomore year, the co-op ended.
“We weren’t sure what numbers were gonna be like for baseball and for other smaller sports,” Koenig said. “We got a house in Portland, and then I started going to school up there just to kind of get out of the uncertainty of whatever their decision was gonna be with co-opping with another school. So yeah, that was the best decision I could have made.”
Portland (pop. 578) is part of the May-Port CG School District, with the school just down the road in Mayville (pop. 1,854).
Playing sports for the May-Port-C-G Patriots, Koenig initially had his heart set on college basketball. By his junior year, he came into his own on the baseball field. So his priority shifted.
“Baseball kind of came naturally. Pitching especially came naturally,” Koenig said. “I moved well. I was just super raw, and never really had too much instruction. So I just kind of tried to figure that out on my own, especially in high school, watching YouTube, watching guys in the big leagues. I would watch a lot of Jacob deGrom. … Baseball was the sport where I thought I had the highest ceiling, so I wanted to chase it.”
Koenig was taken in the eighth round, which is actually a round higher than where deGrom was picked by the Mets in 2010. DeGrom went on to become one of the most dominant starting pitchers of all time.
When Koenig was in high school, though, he wasn’t necessarily thinking about getting drafted.
“It was more so like, ‘I want to play at the highest level possible in whatever [form] the opportunity comes available for me,’” he said.
Koenig dominated the competition at that level. He struck out 168 batters in 95 2/3 career innings, posting a 1.79 ERA.
Radar guns weren’t too prevalent at May-Port CG High School. But Koenig recalled his top velocity registering at around 88 miles per hour at a Prep Baseball event he attended. He later attended a prospect camp at North Dakota State and remembers being up to 91 or 92.
“But that was in the middle of football season. Like, we had just got done. We had just played the No. 1 team in the state and lost by like two,” Koenig recalled. “And then the next day, I’m going [to the camp] and I haven’t picked up a baseball in two months. So I’m just going to Fargo, throwing at this camp, hoping to do well. It was just kind of a whirlwind.”
It paid off, though. Koenig wound up getting recruited to pitch for North Dakota State. He was a hard-throwing, athletic kid with plenty still in the tank, standing at 6-foot-6 and 220 pounds during his time with the Bison.
Koenig credits his May-Port coaches for instilling work ethic and good habits. He particularly noted Kunkel, who he referred to as a “second father figure” to him in high school.
But he admits that much of his initial development as a pitcher came from the work he did on his own.
“They just didn’t really know much about pitching,” Koenig said. “They kind of just let me do my own thing, and I would try to help some of the other guys, too. But it was basically just me trying to look stuff up, figure it out, and then they would just let me roll with it, which was awesome. And they pretty much just deferred to me because it was working in high school, and I was just kind of winging it, honestly.”
Koening largely commandeered his own path.
The three-sport athlete from Page, who got better by watching Jacob deGrom videos on YouTube and testing things out in games, headed to the NCAA Division I level with North Dakota State.
After graduating high school in 2023, he became a starter for the Bison right away in 2024. It didn’t necessarily go as he envisioned, though. He got a bit of a rude awakening from D-I hitters, posting a 7.54 ERA in 59 2/3 innings across 14 starts. He allowed 86 hits and a .345 opposing batting average.
So North Dakota State moved him to the bullpen as a sophomore.
“It definitely was not what I intended, or what I thought I was gonna do my sophomore year,” Koenig said. “But it led to a lot of growth because after that year, I had pretty much thrown in every single situation, inning, different length of outings. I’d pretty much done it all at that point.”
The results were better in the bullpen, with a 5.40 ERA in 46 2/3 innings across 19 games. Koenig struck out 46 batters while only walking 18. He contained hits a little better, with 57 of them.
The shorter outings suited him.
“I didn’t have to worry about trying to go six innings or anything, and make quality starts,” Koenig said. “It was more about keeping the team in the game and keeping the team in the spot where we’re at.”
His velocity, at this point, was up into the mid-90s. Koenig also features a slider and a splitter, each of which sits in the upper 80s.
With high velocity, a good strikeout-to-walk ratio and favorable analytics on him, Koenig entered the transfer portal for an opportunity at a bigger school. He was one of six players from the talented 2025 North Dakota State team, which made an NCAA tournament appearance, to enter the portal, including standout shortstop Jake Schaffner.
Koenig said schools value underlying numbers and traits in portal players, along with specific splits like how they performed against SEC competition.
Koenig ended up going to Ole Miss.
He and the Rebels went all the way to the College World Series in Omaha.
“It was amazing. It was one of the coolest experiences of my life,” Koenig said. “The players and the relationships and just the people we had surrounding the team, it was like no other. I mean, I’l talk to these guys for the rest of my life. Some of my closest friends. And just being at the field every day with that group, it made it super easy. I think a lot of us will say, especially our pitching staff, we all got really close. … We just wanted to win, whatever we had to do. A guy would step into a role, or we’d support somebody else in the role — it didn’t really matter. It was just getting to that point and getting hot at the right time.”
Four years earlier, Koenig had been in the stands at the College World Series as a fan. The May-Port Legion team played in a tournament in Omaha and attended a game. It was Koenig’s first time seeing a college baseball game in person.
Ole Miss won the national championship that year.
When Koenig returned to Charles Schwab Field in June — wearing an Ole Miss jersey this time — the May-Port Legion team was in town again for that same tournament.
“We weren’t fortunate enough to play in the game that they were at, which I thought would have been really cool,” Koenig said.
He did, however, have a chance to catch up with an old friend. Schaffner, his North Dakota State teammate for two years, made it to Omaha with the North Carolina Tar Heels. Schaffner was the leadoff hitter on that team and helped fuel a run to the finals.
Schaffner also heard his name called last weekend. He went in the first round to the Boston Red Sox.
“We didn’t really get a chance to meet on the field, but we caught up in the hotel,” Koenig said. “Especially with him being a first-rounder and going to have the season he did, it’s super cool. I mean, Jake’s a great guy. It’s easy to go and reach out to him whenever we see each other. And he’s awesome. So we met up a little bit at the hotel, caught up over some things.”
Ole Miss went two-and-out in the College World Series, including a 6-2 loss to Schaffner’s Tar Heels. Koenig didn’t get to appear in a game.
But what he did get was a valuable year of coaching and development at the highest level college baseball has to offer. He dialed his fastball up to a peak of 98 mph. He struck out 33 batters in 22 2/3 innings, good for 13.1 per nine innings, while only walking 2.8 per nine.
Koenig’s ERA at Ole Miss was 6.35, though it was buoyed by three particular outings. In the other 14, his ERA was 2.21. He allowed just one earned run in his first 10 innings as a Rebel.
Pitching at that level gave him the tools and exposure to get on MLB teams’ radar. He also participated in the MLB Draft Combine in late June. Coming into the draft, held on July 11 and 12, he’d been contacted by a variety of teams and expected to hear his name somewhere in rounds 5-10.
“I think the goal with going to Ole Miss was to develop and take that next step, and work with a pitching coach that had worked with guys like me and made them a lot better,” Koenig said. “And with the short timeframe I had towards the draft, that’s what I wanted. I wanted to go grind for a year, and ideally have it work out in a situation where I have the opportunity to get drafted and go play professional baseball and chase my dreams.”
In the eighth round, with the 240th overall pick — which carries an approximate value of $232.1 thousand — the Mets selected the May-Port kid.
“I think there’s a lot of support back home,” Koenig said. “It’s pretty cool. Not a lot of kids from where I’m from get this opportunity, so I’m just super blessed, thankful. It’s been awesome to be where I’m from and have the opportunities I have.”
Koenig’s story proves that it’s possible to make a name for yourself coming from a small North Dakota town.
It can often be difficult for athletes in these towns, even the really talented ones, to get their name out there on a wide scale. Koenig’s path sets the groundwork for how it can be achieved anyway.
Just 20 North Dakota-born players have played in the majors, according to Baseball Reference’s database, more than only Wyoming (17) and Alaska (13).
“I feel like there’s a lot of kids like me who are just super raw athletes, that maybe don’t have the resources or the connections,” Koenig said. “I would say, you’ve got to go make those for yourself. You have to put yourself out there. Take a chance, bet on yourself. Just go out and chase something, because if you waste it away, you’re gonna regret it later. And that’s the worst thing you can have is regret.”
Koenig’s fortitude and willingness to push himself to the next level is what eventually led him to hearing his name called in the MLB Draft.
“Going into the portal last summer, I would ask myself if I would regret this in 20 years, or if I would regret it even just the next year,” Koenig said. “So I wanted to go for it, risk it, put it on the line. I think wherever you are, especially nowadays, you can do whatever you want. You’ve just got to go take the initiative.”