Brophy, Eisenmenger and Elmira Staff Take Top Baseball Honors
The Empire 8 Athletic Conference has announced the
2017 Baseball All-Conference teams as voted on by the conference coaches. In addition, the Player of the Year, Pitcher of the Year, Rookie of the Year and Coach of the Year have been selected.
Junior
Scott Eisenmenger of the St. John Fisher College baseball team was named the Empire 8 Player of the Year, while teammate
Anthony Brophy was selected the Pitcher and Rookie of the Year.
Elmira College was voted the Coaching Staff of the Year.
Eisenmenger has started all 40 games to date. Offensively he is hitting .388 to rank first on the team and fifth among E8 players. He totaled 57 hits, 13 doubles, and a league best 55 RBI. He registered at least one hit in all but six games and had three ore more hits on five different occasions. He had an 11-game hit streak in the middle of the season and also had a 10-game hit streak at the end of the regular season. Defensively the first baseman recorded 363 putouts, 15 assists and a perfect 1.000 fielding percentage. It is the ninth time a Fisher player has been named the Player of the Year.
Brophy is the second player in E8 history to claim both individual awards. The other recipient of the Pitcher and Rookie of the Year was Fisher’s Justin D’Amato in 2011. There have also been three other times that a student-athlete has earned two of the major awards. Geoff Dornes of RIT was the Player and Rookie of the Year in 2007 and Jason Yano of Stevens was the Player and Pitcher of the Year in 2015 and 2016.
Brophy has been dominant on the mound as he leads all E8 players with nine victories, including five wins against conference opponents. To date he has 52 strikeouts in 63.0 innings pitched. He has allowed 11 earned runs on 60 hits with 12 walks for a 1.57 ERA. He is the tenth Rookie of the Year from Fisher and the fourth Pitcher of the Year.
The Elmira coaching staff, led by head coach Corey Paluga, guided the team to 16 wins in 2017 and an E8 Tournament appearance. The 16 wins tied the record for the most wins in a season in Elmira’s three year history of the program. The Soaring Eagles secured the third seed in the postseason tournament with a 9-9 record against league opponents. The nine E8 victories set a new record for the Elmira baseball program, but they're more conference wins than the team accumulated in its first two seasons combined.
In addition, one member of each team was named that institution's representative on the 2017 Sportsman of the Year Team. Empire 8 emphasizes that "Competing with Honor and Integrity" is an essential component of a student-athlete's experience in conjunction with an institution's educational mission. These honorees have distinguished themselves and consistently exhibit the critical traits as outstanding sportsmen.
Player of the Year: Scott Eisenmenger, St. John Fisher College
Pitcher of the Year: Anthony Brophy, St. John Fisher College
Rookie of the Year: Anthony Brophy, St. John Fisher College
Coaching Staff of the Year: Elmira College