Justin Hull, Zach Clarke Named to ABCA West Region Third-Team
CLAREMONT, Calif. -- Junior starting pitcher Justin Hull and junior shortstop Zach Clarke both earned spots on the American Baseball Coaches Association West Region Third-Team in a vote by the ABCA NCAA Div. III All-America Committee.
The duo both added to their postseason awards take this spring with the ABCA/Rawlings honor, after being voted to the third team by D3baseball.com honor, and they each earned first-team All-SCIAC in a vote of the league's coaches earlier this month.
Hull starred as the Stags' No. 1 pitcher this spring, finishing tied for second in the conference with eight wins while limiting opponents to two runs or less over eight of his 12 starts. He fanned a career-high 67 batters over 84.1 innings, posting a career-high 7.17 K/9.0 ratio alongside a career-low 2.46 ERA (23 earned runs). The right-hander held opponents to a .215 batting average against, marking the lowest for a starter on the team (min. 7 starts).
Late in the season, Hull tossed three consecutive complete games in conference contests, pushing his career complete-game number to six. During that run, he held No. 9 Chapman to one earned run on just three hits with five strikeouts to get the win in a 2-1 Stag victory. He capped the complete-game run with a season-high nine strikeouts at Caltech over 9.0 innings in an 8-3 win.
Clarke led the SCIAC with a .414 batting average, the only player in the league to hit over .400. He appeared in 33 games for the Stags this season and led the team in home runs (5), doubles (11), hits (55), stolen bases (3), walks (9), and RBI (23). The shortstop finished the season riding a 12-game hitting streak, including a season-high four hits at La Verne on May 4. He drove in a season-high three runs four times (last; May 29 vs. Whittier) along with a team-leading 20 multi-hit games.
Defensively, Clarke held a .930 fielding percentage over 187 total chances and helped turn 21 double plays with 123 assists. He also hit two home runs in a single game for the first time in his career with CMS on Feb. 23 against Cal Lutheran, marking the only time this season that a Stag baseball player hit two home runs in a game.
CMS finished the 2019 campaign at 19-14-1 overall and 12-12 in SCIAC, just missing out on the conference tournament in the season's final weekend. Clarke and Hull will be two of the leaders expected to help get the Stags into the postseason next year when the team returns four of its top six hitters and most of its pitching staff that led the CMS baseball team to the cusp of the conference tournament finishing in fifth place. The CMS baseball team won its most games since 2011, a season that saw the Stags earn 23 wins, and have continued to improve in the win column each of the last five years edging its 2018 win total.
The complete list of 2019 ABCA/Rawlings NCAA Div. III All-Region Teams can be found here.