Foster looks the part of an impact hitter joining a Liberty lineup already full of them.Īfter dominating the ASUN last season with a 19-2 regular-season record, Liberty brings back more than enough to be the favorite in the conference in 2022. Although he’s not quite a finished product defensively, he’s a good athlete at second base whose length will serve him well.
At 6-foot-4 and 210 pounds, he is a physical presence in the batter’s box, and he has the offensive tools to match. In a pitching-centric league like the ASUN, Durgin will have plenty of competition, but he has the stuff and track record to go into 2022 as the favorite for the league’s pitcher of the year honors.įreshman of the Year: Cameron Foster, 2B, Libertyįoster is projected to take over at second base for Will Wagner at Liberty, and while those shoes are some very big shoes to fill, Foster is a special talent. The righthander works with a fastball that sits in the low 90s and touched 93 mph last season with a high-spin slider in the low 80s that induced a greater than 50% whiff rate in 2021. 198 opponent batting average and 94 strikeouts compared to 18 walks in 89.2 innings in his Stetson career. Combined with his dominant performance in four starts during the shortened 2020 season, he has a 2.31 ERA, a. 200 opponent batting average and 67 strikeouts in 62 innings. Pitcher of the Year: Nick Durgin, RHP, Stetsonĭurgin was excellent for Stetson last season, putting up a 6-2 record with a 2.61 ERA, a.
Anderson was a huge part of Liberty’s championship-winning season in 2021 and he should be a centerpiece again in 2022. To top it off, he’s a solid defender in left field and he plays the game with palpable enthusiasm. His batting average was 14 points higher than the next highest, he had eight more doubles than the second-highest total (belonging to teammate Gray Betts) and he had 13 more hits than Betts, who also finished second in that category. In fact, he blew away the competition in all three of those categories. 375/.460/.567 with 25 doubles, four home runs and 42 RBIs to lead the conference in hitting, doubles and hits (84). Player of the Year: Aaron Anderson, OF, LibertyĪfter transferring from Division II Flagler (Fla.), the switch-hitting Anderson in 2021 made the adjustment to the Division I level look easy, hitting. While there may be an adjustment period for the newcomers in the league, all three have history as solid programs, with JSU going to a regional as recently as 2019, providing hope that they will add value over the long haul.įor now, though, the power center of the ASUN will likely remain with the teams that have been running the league in recent years, and namely for the 2022 season, with Liberty, which brings back a team capable of defending its title.
Ranking asun conference fgcu plus#
The West Division is made up of the three teams new to the conference this year, plus Bellarmine and North Alabama, which both came up from Division II in the last several years, and Lipscomb, which is the only team in the division to have been a member of the ASUN for more than three years. Put another way, that division features all of the longstanding ASUN members who have made postseason appearances in the last five years. That division includes defending regular-season champion Liberty, plus Florida Gulf Coast, Jacksonville, Kennesaw State, North Florida and Stetson. That bit of realignment precipitated the creation of East and West divisions within the league, and on paper, the East Division is the tougher of the two divisions. This offseason, the baseball membership grew to 12 with the addition of Central Arkansas from the Southland Conference and Eastern Kentucky and Jacksonville State from the Ohio Valley Conference. Liberty OF Aaron Anderson (Photo courtesy of Liberty)Ĭhange is afoot in the ASUN again leading into the 2022 season.
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