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College  | Story  | 4/3/2019

Midseason College Honors

Patrick Ebert      Mike Rooney     
Photo: Hunter Bishop (Arizona State Athletics)

Contributing: Stu Murray

Perfect Game College Top 25 | Player/Pitcher of the Week | College Player Database

We say it every year at this point, but it’s hard to believe we’re midway through the season. It does still feel relatively young for the simple fact that conference play is still relatively fresh, but with seven weeks down and seven weeks to go during the regular season, teams have just as much baseball ahead of them as they do behind them, at least before conference tournaments begin.

The story so far during the 2019 college baseball season is the dominance of the Pac-12. The top three teams in the Perfect Game College Top 25 all hail from the conference – No. 1 UCLA, No. 2 Stanford and No. 3 Oregon State. Heading into the year we knew the talent weighed heavily on the West Coast, and those name-brand pieces haven’t disappointed with Oregon State catcher Adley Rutschman and Cal first baseman Andrew Vaughn being the first two players listed on the All-America teams listed below.

And while neither Rutschman nor Vaughn is the Midseason Player of the Year, fellow Pac-12 slugger Hunter Bishop of Arizona State is.



Bishop is leading a lethal Arizona State offense with some ridiculous numbers. He’s slashing .424/.558/1.040. (You read the slugging percentage correctly, it’s above 1.000 through 26 games.) He has 27 extra-base hits, 16 of which are home runs, he has scored 44 times, has driven in 40 runs and has 42 base hits. If he didn’t spend so much time circling the bases he would probably have more than 10 stolen bases, too.

Hunter Bishop Player Report

A 6-foot-5, 210-pound lefthanded slugger, Bishop is a rare five-tool talent that makes everything look easy on the baseball field. He also excelled in football while in high school, and while he hit .301-5-25 as a freshman in 2017, his sophomore year didn’t go quite as well, hitting .250. Reports surfaced in fall ball of a player poised for a breakout campaign, and with Bishop’s breakout season statistically he has also soared up draft boards, currently ranked fourth among college players among those eligible for the 2019 draft.

Not surprisingly for a team that wasn’t even ranked coming into the season, Arizona State is full of pleasant surprises as Tracy Smith has guided the Sun Devils to a 25-1 start. They opened the year 21-0 before suffering their first loss in mid-March and are coming off of a sweep of their in-state, in-conference rivals, the Arizona Wildcats. Friday ace Alec Marsh, like Bishop, is a First Team Midseason All-American as he is 7-0 through eight appearances, seven of which are starts, with a sub 1.00 (0.94) ERA. ASU is hitting .338 as a team and has a staff ERA of 3.06, pointing to their overall team dominance.

As a result, the Arizona State Sun Devils are Perfect Game’s 2019 college baseball Midseason Team of the Year.

Midseason Pitcher of the Year honors go to Louisville’s Reid Detmers who has a knack for missing bats. A 6-foot-2, 210-pound lefthanded pitcher, Detmers has served as Louisville’s staff ace all season long after serving in a swing role as a freshman. While he went 4-2 with a 4.85 ERA a season ago, he did whiff 69 batters in 55 2/3 innings.



Detmers has upped the ante this year, with numbers similarly ridiculous to Hunter Bishop’s. Through seven starts Detmers is 5-1 with a 0.92 ERA. In 48 2/3 innings he has allowed just 24 hits and eight walks while striking out 76 batters. He has struck out double-digit batters in five of his seven starts, including a 16-strikeout performance against Georgia Tech two weeks ago, which ironically was the only loss he suffered so far this season.

The stuff matches the performance, with the ability to sit in the low-90s with a big-breaking curveball that serves as his break-and-butter strikeout offering.

Reid Detmers Player Report

It’s hard to say that JT Ginn’s success has been a surprise as there’s been no shortage of fanfare associated with him ever since he spurned the Dodgers last summer after they took him with the 30thoverall pick in the 2018 MLB Draft. He was a PG All-American the summer before, a true two-way performer that stood out both on the mound and in the batter’s box.



However, no one could have predicted this level of success, at least not this early. He opened the year as Mississippi State’s Saturday starter and has played a huge role in the team being currently ranked sixth in the nation. Ginn has pitched the Bulldogs to wins over three ranked clubs – Texas Tech, Florida and Auburn – and only recently suffered his first loss of the year when LSU got the best of him last Friday. Overall he’s 6-1 with a 3.32 ERA and a 58-to-6 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 43 1/3 innings of work.

JT Ginn Player Report

There are no shortage of options for the Midseason Coach of the Year, but we’re going with the skipper of the No. 1 team in the nation as the midpoint of the season, UCLA’s John Savage. Yes, UCLA entered the year with lofty expectations, but it’s important to note that they have met, and even surpassed, those expectations to this point of the year and have done so without being at full strength.

The team’s projected staff ace heading into the year, Ryan Garcia, has only recently begun working back to full strength, and for now appears to be settled in as the team’s Sunday starter. Zach Pettway has performed admirably on Fridays while redshirt junior Jack Ralston has done the same on Saturdays. Kyle Mora and Holden Powell continued to be the team’s most-often turned to bullpen arms.

While Coach Savage has always built his teams with strong pitching and defense, coming into the year it was the offense that had the most star power. Their Preseason All-American right side of the infield of Chase Strumpf and Michael Toglia hasn’t fully hit their stride. Outfielder Jeremy Ydens, one of their top hitters and leadoff hitter from a year ago, has been dinged up. Their prized freshman recruit Matt McLain has been running hot and cold so far this year, hitting .219 but with several key hits already to this point of the season.

Most importantly the Bruins are 20-5 with Pac-12 series wins over then-No. 1 Oregon State, Arizona and USC in addition to a key non-conference road series victory over Georgia Tech. They have another big test ahead of them this coming weekend as they travel to No. 2 Stanford and you know Coach Savage will have his team prepared for the challenge.

Midseason Perfect Game/Rawlings College Baseball Awards:

Player of the Year: Hunter Bishop, of, Arizona State
Pitcher of the Year: Reid Detmers, rhp, Louisville
Freshman of the Year: JT Ginn, rhp, Mississippi State
Coach of the Year: John Savage, UCLA
Team of the Year: Arizona State


Midseason Perfect Game/Rawlings College Baseball All-American Teams
Statistics for games played through Sunday, March 31

First Team
Pos. Player School AVG OBP SLG R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB
C Adley Rutschman Oregon State .410 .586 .782 26 32 3 1 8 29 0
1B Andrew Vaughn California .360 .530 .721 26 31 4 0 9 28 2
2B Nick Gonzales New Mexico State .483 .564 .862 44 56 9 1 11 51 4
3B Kody Hoese Tulane .374 .468 .765 31 43 9 0 12 31 4
SS Will Wilson NC State .333 .411 .634 29 41 13 0 8 35 1
OF Hunter Bishop Arizona State .424 .558 1.040 44 42 9 2 16 40 10
OF JJ Bleday Vanderbilt .355 .449 709 33 39 6 0 11 34 0
OF Jake Mangum Mississippi State .398 .445 .556 33 53 14 2 1 24 15
DH Jake Sanford Western Kentucky .381 .450 .886 33 40 9 1 14 42 2
UT Alec Burleson East Carolina .420 .427 .640 14 42 10 0 4 21 0


Pos. Player School ERA W-L CG SV IP H SO BB BAA
SP Reid Detmers Louisville 0.92 5-1 0 0 48.2 24 76 8 .143
SP Emerson Hancock Georgia 0.98 6-1 0 0 46 21 49 11 .136
SP Alec Marsh Arizona State 0.94 7-0 0 0 48 36 42 17 .213
SP Tommy Henry Michigan 0.76 6-1 1 0 47.2 28 57 7 .167
SP Logan Allen Florida International 1.05 3-2 0 0 42.2 24 66 14 .162
RP Brandon Eisert Oregon State 0.30 6-0 0 0 30 16 44 5 .157
RP Matt Cronin Arkansas 0.71 1-0 0 7 12.2 4 21 6 .098
UT Alec Burleson East Carolina 2.96 2-0 0 2 27.1 23 32 9 .230


Second Team

Pos. Player School AVG OBP SLG R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB
C Kyle McCann Georgia Tech .347 .504 .792 25 35 9 0 12 35 0
1B Joe Davis Houston .337 .419 .733 15 34 7 0 11 37 0
MIF Jordan Westburg Mississippi State .383 .478 .661 35 44 13 2 5 33 4
MIF Ethan Paul Vanderbilt .373 .403 .555 18 41 9 1 3 38 4
3B Brandon Lewis UC Irvine .344 .436 .774 22 32 10 0 10 33 1
OF Harrison Freed Butler .408 .479 .738 25 42 4 3 8 33 5
OF Michael Wilson Stony Brook .447 .488 .789 19 34 5 3 5 26 4
OF Kieton Rivers Coastal Carolina .384 .496 .657 31 38 9 3 4 33 7
DH Peyton Burdick Wright State .411 .543 .711 33 37 8 2 5 27 8
UT Cade Cavalli Oklahoma .361 .423 .656 15 22 5 2 3 16 0


Pos. Player School ERA W-L CG SV IP H SO BB BAA
SP Asa Lacy Texas A&M 1.48 5-0 0 0 42.2 22 68 16 .152
SP Noah Song Navy 1.54 5-0 4 0 46.2 25 90 18 .158
SP Tanner Burns Auburn 1.40 4-0 1 0 45 24 59 10 .151
SP Nick Lodolo TCU 1.13 4-2 0 0 48 30 63 10 .178
SP Isaiah Campbell Arkansas 2.03 6-0 0 0 44.1 32 56 7 .200
RP Jacob Wallace Connecticut 0.47 2-0 0 7 19 8 27 3 .127
RP Evan Braband Liberty 0.00 2-0 0 8 25 16 37 4 .184
UT Cade Cavalli Oklahoma 4-1 1.66 0 0 38 29 38 21 .213



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