By Mike Lehman, TTU Sports Information
To view the 2016 Baseball America Freshman All-America Team selections, click here.
COOKEVILLE, Tenn. – The honors and awards just keep rolling in for Tennessee Tech baseball's Kevin Strohschein, as the freshman outfielder was honored at the national level for his record-breaking 2016 season, taking home Baseball America Freshman All-America First Team honors.
Strohschein littered his name all over the program's record book, breaking freshman records for hits, doubles, home runs, RBI, runs, and total bases while also clubbing a team-high 15 long balls on the year and racking up the third-most RBI in school history by driving in 73 runs.
The youngster's 90 hits tied for the third most by a Golden Eagle ever and his 21 doubles and 15 home runs each ranked in the top 10 in program history. Strohschein's .393 average and .707 slugging percentage ranked as the second-best showing by a freshman to only Jim Whaley, who hit .516 and slugged .730 back in 1963. His 39 extra base hits also ranked as a program first by a freshman and finished as the fourth-most ever by a Tech ball player.
He scored 57 runs on the year, one of nine offensive categories he led his squad in on the year. He also made just one error all season, posting an impressive .990 fielding percentage with five assists.
Behind numbers of that magnitude, it comes as no surprise that this latest honor is just the tip of the iceberg. So far, Strohschein has earned Perfect Game/Rawlings All-America Honorable Mention, took home a spot on the 2016 National Collegiate Baseball Writer's Association (NCBWA) Freshman All-American First Team and captured one of the highest honors ever presented to a Golden Eagle athlete, earning a share of the 2016 Louisville Slugger National Co-Freshman Player of the Year award named by Collegiate Baseball newspaper with the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) Player of the Year, Seth Beer. He also represented Tech on the Louisville Slugger Freshman All-American Team named by the same organization.
And that wasn't even the start of the massive haul of awards that have donned his name.
He set the precedent for his huge postseason accumulation of accolades just with his selection as a Louisville Slugger All-American Third Team honoree by Collegiate Baseball newspaper. The honor hardly came as a surprise, however, as Strohschein became the first player in the 67-year history of the Ohio Valley Conference to take home Player of the Year honors. In the same banquet he also represented the OVC's Rookie of the Year and earned a place on the All-OVC First Team and OVC All-Freshman Team.
After batting just .242 with three home runs and 12 RBI through his first 16 games, Strohschein went on a tear over his final 37 contests, posting hit streaks of nine, 10 and 15 games. In fact, he went hitless in just three of those match-ups, exploding in an April 5 tilt at Alabama A&M to break or tie three school records. While the team broke and tied two marks in the 34-6 rout, it was the right fielder's performance that shown most brightly.
Strohschein tallied a school-record nine RBI thanks to a program-best six hits while tying the Tech mark for runs scored with six. He also tied the school's single-season grand slam record with his third four-run circus clout of the season in the ninth inning. The performance alone would have been enough to garner him his first OVC Player of the Week honors, but he added more in the weekend series at Eastern Illinois, helping Tech a three-game sweep.
He captured his second OVC Player of the Week and first National Player of the Week accolades after flirting with the national record for consecutive hits, starting off Tech's three-game series with Southeast Missouri a staggering 9-for-9 before a diving effort on a would-be double robbed him of his 10th straight base hit.
Photo by Jim Dillon
