Last season, WSU won the MVC title. Second-place Creighton swept the pitcher and player of the year honors. You didn’t hear much griping. The Shockers were a balanced team with several very good players, and two or three Player of the Year candidates, but nobody that presented an air-tight case.
This season, WSU won the MVC title and again didn’t get either of those top two awards. WSU coaches, fans and players have a problem with the voting, and they should. Center fielder Andy Dirks was my choice. Third baseman Conor Gillaspie is just as good a pick, for his numbers and for everything he means to the other eight batters in the lineup. UNI’s Brandon Douglas won it.
Is this a big deal? Yes and no. Obviously team honors mean more. However, conference honors are part of earning All-America honors. Even the most team-oriented people would admit All-America honors carry some weight.
I usually avoid the “Everybody hates us” complaining by the Shockers. There is some merit to it, but there are also times the conspiracy theories are best ignored. It should be mentioned that in 2006, when WSU finished second behind Evansville, it picked up the Player of the Year (Damon Sublett), Pitcher of the Year (Aaron Shafer) and Freshman of the Year (Shafer) honors.
Besides the obvious, I have two arguments for Dirks or Gillaspie over Douglas.
- They start with strength of schedule. Boyd’s World ranks WSU’s strength of schedule as 89th with UNI at 159. That doesn’t do justice to the difference when you eyeball the schedule. WSU has played tougher schedules in past seasons, but even this one is significantly more ambitious than UNI’s. The stats for Dirks and Gillaspie are comparable to Douglas, against better competition.
- In the biggest MVC series, Dirks and Gillaspie performed better than Douglas (of course, they didn’t have to hit WSU pitching). Gillaspie hit .393 (11-28) with eight runs and five RBIs against Creighton, Missouri State and one game against UNI. Dirks hit .500 (19-38) with seven RBI (five in one game against MSU) and eight runs. Douglas hit .313 (10-32) with one run and four RBI against WSU, Creighton and MSU.
Add in the fact WSU won the MVC and Northern Iowa finished fourth. To me, that’s an unbeatable case for one of the Shockers.
Douglas is a great player. He is the kind of player that would fit in at WSU. He was overlooked out of high school in Iowa and made himself into a pro prospect. He had an excellent year for a program that deserves credit for battling in a tough weather and scholarship situation. He is all that, but not the Player of the Year in the MVC in my mind.
WSU has two other legitimate gripes. Aaron Shafer and Ryan Jones were not treated well by the other coaches. I can’t imagine that any MVC coach would draft Jeremy Hauer or Guido Fonseca ahead of Shafer. You could even make an argument Shafer and teammate Anthony Capra should switch all-conference spots. Jones is vicimized in part by a strong crop of outfielders. The honorable-mention outfield includes the MVC RBI leader (Brady Shoemaker, Indiana State), and Missouri State’s Nolan Keane. There are a lot of good outfielders in the MVC, and Jones was one of them.