Video Tribute: The CMS Baseball Class of 2021

As part of NCAA Division III week (Apr. 5-11), we will be honoring the senior classes for all 21 of our varsity sports. A number of our student-athletes elected to take a semester or a school year off and could return to action next season, but we have chosen to honor the senior classes as they would have been, without the COVID-19 interruption. The members of the Class of 2021 lost so much of what they had built towards in their first 2-3 years of competition when the pandemic hit, but still clearly left their mark on CMS Athletics.

CLAREMONT, Calif. - The CMS Baseball Class of 2021 had the program on a clear upward trajectory, leading the Stags to their first winning season since 2011 as sophomores and showing promise for a breakthrough year in 2020 as a juniors.

The 2019 season's 19-14 overall record and 12-12 mark in the SCIAC put the Stags in contention for a postseason bid heading into the final weekend of the regular season. CMS started out the 2020 SCIAC slate with a difficult series with nationally ranked Cal Lutheran and was right there in all three contests before falling 5-3, 8-7 and 12-11 in 10 innings). The Stags then took two out of three from Redlands as they appeared to be developing the confidence to make a push into the top four in the conference standings and earn a SCIAC Tournament bid, before everything suddenly shut down. 

The 19 wins the Class of 2021 produced as sophomores (with several games lost to weather in an unusually rainy winter season), was the highest total for the program since the 23 won by the 2011 team, and the Stags also could claim a 2-1 win over the eventual national champions from Chapman.  



The six members of the CMS Baseball Class of 2021 (five seniors and one graduate student) are as follows:

Carson Bridges (OF, Alameda, Calif. - CMC, Economics and Psychology)
Bridges appeared in 32 games as a sophomore outfielder, tallying a .250 batting average and 17 runs scored. He had a four-hit performance in a win over Occidental and had a three-hit effort in a 9-6 victory over Whittier. He also hit .306 in 25 games as a first-year, including a 2-for-2 effort against Whitman in his second career game. His sophomore year included a two-run homer against Redlands, while his freshman year featured a round-tripper against Pomona-Pitzer. An economics and psychology major at Claremont McKenna, is pursuing his masters in finance at the Drucker School of Management and will serve as a contract underwriting intern at Merchants Bonding Company in Seattle beginning in June.

Sean Emery (OF, El Segundo, Calif. - CMC, Economics)
Emery was part of the CMS outfield rotation throughout his career with the Stags, totaling 14 hits and 11 RBI in his two-plus seasons. As a sophomore he broke into the line-up in a midseason doubleheader with Occidental, producing a pair of hits that started a six-game hitting streak. He hit a two-run homer in an 8-2 win over New Rochelle, and had the defensive highlight of the year when he went over the fence to pull back a tying home run in a 2-1 win over eventual national champion Chapman. An economics major at Claremont McKenna, Emery is pursuing his masters in finance through the Robert Day Scholars Program. He interned with FTI Consulting in the summer of 2020, where he is working as a full-time consultant in corporate finance. 

Patrick Gavin (2B, Santa Rosa, Calif. - CMC, Economics)
Gavin was off to a huge start to his junior season in 2020, batting .348 through the first 14 games with two homers and 14 RBI. He earned the SCIAC Hitter of the Week Award after batting 6-for-10 with five RBI in a series with Redlands. In the series finale, he was 2-for-4 with a double and four RBI to help CMS win the rubber game. He also had at least one hit in all three games of the SCIAC series with nationally ranked Cal Lutheran, including a home run with three runs scored in the middle game. As a sophomore, he had a pair of 6-for-9 performances in doubleheaders against Occidental and Pomona-Pitzer, while as a first-year he captured the SCIAC Newcomer of the Year Award. An economics major at CMC, he served last summer as a business growth and development intern at Immersion Neuroscience, and as a finance and investments intern at Trinity Wall Street in the summer of 2019. 

Brandon Mitchell (RHP, Edmonds, Wash. - CMC, Computer Science/Applied Mathematics)
Mitchell held a spot in the weekend rotation for the Stags in 2020 and had a huge impact, earning the SCIAC Pitcher of the Week on Feb. 10 after striking out 14 and allowing two hits over seven innings in a win over Lewis & Clark. He also went seven strong innings, allowing three hits and striking out seven in a 9-3 win over Redlands. He had 32 strikeouts and only six walks in an abbreviated season, after closing out 2019 with two wins, including an eight-inning, three-hit effort in a win over La Verne. In his two years as a pitcher, he had a 5-3 record and a 3.40 ERA with 96 strikeouts and 23 walks, after hitting .295 with three homers and 15 RBI as a first-year. A computer science and applied mathematics major, Mitchell is the owner and developer of Strike Robotics LLC and has served as a software engineer intern. 

Nico Mannucci (RHP, Pasadena, Calif. - CMC, Economics)
Mannucci was developing into a major weapon out of the CMS bullpen as his career was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. He made four appearances in relief in 2020 and had a 0.00 ERA, earning saves in a 4-3 win over Lewis & Clark and a 4-2 win over Redlands. He also had an inning of perfect relief in a 10-5 win over Whitman. As a sophomore, he had a 1-1 record with one save, picking up the save with three innings of work in a win at Whittier. An economics major at Claremont McKenna with a sequence in data science, Mannucci has been a member of the SCIAC All-Academic Team and wrote his senior thesis on Corporate Fraud: An Analysis of What Determines the Future of Fraudulent Companies. On campus, he has worked as a media technology assistant.   

Andrew Shults (OF, South Pasadena, Calif. - CGU, Information Systems and Technology)
Shults joined the CMS Baseball program in 2020 as a graduate student at CGU after earning his degree from Grinnell, where he batted .387 in his career and earned All-Region honors while taking one redshirt season. He played in 12 games for the Stags in the outfield in 2020, batting 2-for-4 in his CMS debut, before the shutdown of sports in March. He also showed great patience as a leadoff hitter, drawing four walks in a doubleheader sweep of Lewis & Clark. Shults graduated from Grinnell with a degree in biochemistry and a minor in environmental studies, and has served as a research assistant at Balto Pharmaceuticals in Pasadena and at the University of Pennsylvania Center for Neurogenerative Diseases, studying Parkinson's Disease.