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St. LOUIS – A quartet of Missouri State baseball players were honored for their work both on the diamond and in the classroom Tuesday as Missouri Valley Conference Scholar-Athlete selections. Drake Baldwin, Cam Cratic and Riyan Rodriguez were first-team honorees, while Jake McMahill made the honorable mention squad.
Baldwin, a junior catcher from Madison, Wis., batted .341 with 19 home runs and 70 RBI for the Bears while carrying a 3.80 cumulative grade point average in general business. The second-team all-MVC selection reached safely in 57 of MSU’s 60 games, had multiple hits 26 times and two-plus RBI on 17 occasions. Baldwin had three multi-homer games on the year, is MSU’s career fielding percentage leader at .994, and his 2022 RBI total ties for seventh in school history.
Cratic is also a CoSIDA Academic All-District selection and MSU’s Scholar-Athlete of the Year for 2021-22, which is given annually to the graduating senior with the highest cumulative GPA. He graduated with a 3.80 GPA in sociology last month and finished the year batting .285 with eight home runs and 33 RBI in 45 games. The Madison, Wis., native hit two home runs in an inning on April 3, 2022 at Samford, believed to be a first in school history, smacked the go-ahead home run in MSU’s MVC Tournament win against Illinois State, and hit a grand slam at Oklahoma State in the NCAA Regional.
Rodriguez appeared in 28 games for the Bears and went 4-0 with a 4.31 ERA and 61 strikeouts in 54.1 innings while holding opponents to a .218 average. The graduate transfer from Santa Clarita, Calif., logged at least five strikeouts in four separate relief outings and threw two-plus hitless innings on five occasions. He owns a 3.80 GPA in his master’s of natural and applied sciences program and was an MVC all-tournament selection after going 2-0 with seven scoreless relief innings in the event.
Another grad transfer pitcher for the Bears, McMahill accumulated a 3.95 GPA in his sports management graduate program and went 2-1 with five saves for MSU this spring with 39 strikeouts in 36 innings. He had three saves in MVC games with two others coming at No. 4 Arkansas on May 3 and versus Evansville in the MVC Tournament on May 28. The Blue Springs, Mo., native picked up the win in Missouri State’s NCAA Tournament game with Grand Canyon, throwing 4.2 relief innings with seven strikeouts.
The criteria for the Missouri Valley Conference Scholar-Athlete Team voting parallels the CoSIDA (College Sports Information Directors of America) standards for Academic All-America voting. Nominees must be starters or important reserves, with at least a 3.30 cumulative grade point average. Student-athletes must have reached sophomore athletic and academic standing at their institution and must have completed at least one full academic year at their institution. The Valley’s scholar-athlete team is voted on by the league’s baseball sports information directors.
