Minnesota Baseball: Big Ten Champs bring home Big Ten regular season awards

Gopher baseball is about to begin the Big Ten Tournament, but first the conference announced the end of season awards. Unsurprisingly the Gophers took home quite a bit of hardware.

It was previously posted here that Patrick Fredrickson took home both the Big Ten’s Pitcher of the Year and Freshman of the Year awards. But you don’t win the Big Ten on the back of your Saturday starter alone. The Gopher’s also managed to have the league’s top offense and 2nd best defense. Other very deserving Gophers earned awards as well.

Coach of the Year - John Anderson

No surprise here as the Gophers not only played above their anticipated finish, but also won the league without the final game of the season being necessary. This is Anderson’s 7th B1G COY award and he earned it this year.

1st Team All-Big Ten

• SS - Terrin Vavra - was 2nd in the Big Ten in batting while leading his team in Avg, HRs, RBIs and finished 2nd in runs scored. Vavra was a unanimous 1st team selection. Regular season stat line of .387, 9 HRs, 50 RBIs, 47 runs
• SP - Patrick Fredrickson - much has been written about the freshman and no shock that he’s also earned 1st team All-Big Ten.
• RP - Max Meyer - again...lost in the chatter around how good our first two starters have been is the fact that Max Meyer has been closing out games for the Gophers. And he’s dominated. Meyer has 1.60 ERA and 14 saves in 22 appearances.

2nd Team All-Big Ten

Missing out on the top line, but these Gophers earned their spots on 2nd Team all-conference.

• 3B - Micah Coffey - Earned 2nd Team honors for the third year in a row. Coffey actually took a slight step back at the plate this year but was still quite good. The senior started all 50 games. Regular season stat line of .293, 5 HRs, 32 RBIs, 29 runs scored.
• OF - Ben Mezzenga - Hitting second in the order, Mezzenga also was a guy who got on base often, stole some bases, scored some runs and contributed to a balanced Gopher offense. Regular season stat line of .379, 0 HRs, 24 RBIs, 38 runs, 11 stolen bases.
• SP - Reggie Meyer - lost in all of the Fredrickson hoopla is the fact that Meyer was the team’s Friday Starter who went up against the opponent’s other #1 starter. The Gophers, as a team, went 7-1 in Friday Big Ten games (while also winning game 1 against TCU). Meyer finished 6-3 with a 3.03 ERA.

3rd Team All-Big Ten

• 2B - Luke Pettersen - started all 50 games and was the team’s leadoff hitter. Finished 4th in the B1G in runs scored (leading the Gophers), 15th in batting average and very good defensively. Also...had only 2 errors all season for a .992 fielding percentage!! Regular season stat line of .327, 1 HR, 24 RBIs, 50 runs and 11 stolen bases

That is a grand total of 7 Gophers who earned regular season honors after having a fantastic season as a team. It should also be noted that Max Meyer and Fredrickson were on the All-Freshman team.