Enfield Product is College Conference Baseball Player of the Year

WILLIMANTIC, CT — In a span of 11 seasons through 2016, the Eastern Connecticut State University baseball program won a combined nine Little East Conference regular season and tournament championships, without the individual ultimately voted upon as the conference’s Player of the Year.

With the selection of senior All-American center fielder Alex Zachary of Enfield, the LEC’s Player of the Year comes from Eastern for the first time since 2005.

Zachary, who ranks among the top three in the LEC in hits, batting average, runs batted in, home runs, extra-base hits, total bases and stolen bases, was named the program’s sixth Player of the Year, and first since junior third baseman Zach Mehrbach in 2005.

The team’s No. 3 batter in the lineup, Zachary topped the team in batting average (.404), hits (61), runs (42), extra-base hits (25), slugging percentage (.702), on-base percentage (.477), runs batted in (42) and stolen bases (25). Defensively, he had 95 putouts and a .980 fielding percentage.

Zachary shares the LEC lead with nine home runs, is second in slugging, tied for second in batting average and hits, and is third in RBI and stolen bases.

This year, he broke the program record by hitting safely in 35 consecutive games - the last 20 in 2016 and first 15 this year) and ended his career by reaching base in his last 20 games. He topped the team with 19 multi-hit games and 12 multi-RBI games, and reached base in all but one of 37 games.

In his career, Zachary started all 79 games in center field and batted .391 (eighth best all-time) with 19 home runs, a .685 slugging average (third best all-time), 124 hits, 50 extra-base hits, 85 runs scored, 80 RBI and 36 stolen bases.

Eastern won 21 and lost 16 this year, split 14 LEC regular-season games and won one of three games in the LEC tournament.

Story and photo courtesy of Eastern Connecticut State University Athletics