OCAA Baseball Awards Feature Eight Saints
The 2024 installment of St. Clair College Men’s Baseball features eight players named in the OCAA Baseball Awards that were released on Wednesday.
The Saints chased perfection all season only faltering in the final game allowing them to finish with a 17-1 record and take the league pennant. OCAA First-Team All-Star selections included 4th year catcher and designated hitter Henry Real (Panama City, Panama), 3rd year outfielder Andrew Sleiman (Leamington, ON/Cardinal Carter), 3rd year infielder Josh Hudvagner (Essex, ON/Essex), 2nd year pitcher Brady Knelsen (Leamington, ON, Leamington) and 4th year pitcher Brock Whitson (Chatham, ON).
In addition to his First-Team selection Sleiman picked up some Major Award hardware as the OCAA Batting Champion finishing with a league best .486 average adding 10 RBI and 19 runs scored which ranked 6th in the province.
Real was voted the league’s best designated hitter but was also one of the top catchers in the OCAA while batting .362 with 15 RBI. Hudvagner split time between the corner infield positions and was 9th in OCAA batting with a .406 average adding 9 RBI.
Pitcher of the Year honours went to Knelsen who had a perfect 6-0 record with three complete game performances and only surrendered two earned runs over 35.0 innings. He finished with the top earned run average at a stingy 0.40 and struck out 51 total batters while leading nearly every statistical category amongst OCAA hurlers. Whitson was nearly as impressive with a 5-0 record and a 1.15 ERA over 30.1 innings pitched achieving four complete games on the hill for the Saints.
2nd outfielder/pitcher Tyler Brown-Amlin (Windsor, ON/Sandwich) and Kanaan Gale (Leamington, ON/Cardinal Carter) were named OCAA Second-Team All-Stars. Gale hit .344 with 9 RBI while Brown-Amlin batted .433 with a win and a save on the mound while sporting a 2.10 ERA.
First year player Jordan Miller (Kitchener, ON) earned a selection to the OCAA All-Rookie team as a capable middle infielder while batting .314 to go with 12 RBI.
St. Clair is the #1 seed to the OCAA Provincial Championship tournament and begin with a 10:00am game on Friday. The Saints will play the lowest remaining seed which will be determined from Thursday’s play-in games. Lambton College is the host for the Championship being held at Sarnia’s Stan Slack Field in Errol Russell Park.