Former Port Neches-Groves standout Grant Rogers included in college baseball’s best
Published 12:34 am Friday, April 28, 2023
- Grant Rogers is No. 1 in the Southland Conference and 8th in NCAA with a 1.77 ERA and leads the league with 68 strikeouts. (mcneesesports.com)
|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
LAKE CHARLES, La. — McNeese State University starting pitcher Grant Rogers has been added to the watch list of one of the nation’s top awards – the National Pitcher of the Year Award.
Rogers, a junior from Groves, was named a mid-season All-American by D1Baseball three weeks ago.
This season he’s tied for the nation’s lead with nine wins on the season (9-0 record) and leads the Southland Conference in ERA (1.77), strikeouts to walks ration (6.8), total strikeouts (68), and complete games thrown (3). Nationally, he’s 13th in ERA, fifth in complete games and 10th in strikeouts to walks.
Grant Rogers is 9-0 on the season and is just the second player in school history to start the season 9-0. (mcneesesports.com)
A total of 61 pitchers made the list as the award will be presented later this year by the College Baseball Foundation.
“What a great honor for Grant,” said head coach Justin Hill. “He came into this season with a chip on his shoulder. He made some adjustments during the off-season that have paid off. I’m extremely excited for him.”
Rogers is just the second player in school history to start the season with a 9-0 record (Jared Gothreaux, 2000).
Rogers graduated from Port Neches-Groves High School in 2019.
He became the McNeese State Cowboys’ Friday night starter in his first year in the blue and gold (2022). Rogers led McNeese with six wins overall, 71 innings pitched and 66 strikeouts. Rogers led the league with four wins during conference play, pitching to the fifth-lowest ERA in SLC play (3.86) while holding opposing hitters to a .203 average, the second-lowest among starting pitchers.
Rogers, no stranger to fielding his position, had three putouts and nine assists fielding to a .923% on the mound. All of this led to an SLC Picher of the Year honor by the conference when the season ended in 2022.
Winners of eight of its last 10 games and three straight Southland Conference series, McNeese Baseball returns to league play today when it takes on Incarnate Word for the start of a three-game series.
The Cowboys will throw Rogers in Friday’s opener.
The Cowboys (27-13, 8-7 SLC) took two out of three games against New Orleans last weekend and defeated LSU-Alexandria in mid-week action while UIW (22-19, 9-6) has dropped three straight games, including a 9-8 loss to UTRGV on Tuesday.
The Cardinals dropped two out of three to Northwestern State last weekend.
