After a season with SBVC, freshman second baseman Jonathan McCray (Riverside Martin Luther King, Jr.) was taken as the 729th overall selection by the Kansas City Royals in the 24th round of the 2015 First-Year Player Draft on Wednesday.
McCray was not only named All-American this last season, but was also named first team All-Foothill Conference as a second baseman. As a batter, he finished tenth in the State in RBI's with 40 and 11th in home runs with 5. McCray finished the season with a .383 batting average and a .450 on base percentage, collecting 50 hits. As second baseman, he finished with a Fielding Percentage of .981 with 77 put outs, while turning 23 double plays.
Baseball head coach Bill Mierzwik was named as the winner the Foothill Conference Coach of the Year award. An award bestowed upon Mierzwik after guiding SBVC to their third straight Conference Championship, approaching a historic coaching milestone by capturing his 593rd coaching victory. A former teammate of McCray's in high school and college, sophomore right handed starting pitcher Nick Przybylek (Riverside Martin Luther King, Jr.) was named All-State and Foothill Conference Pitcher of the Year; in addition, six other players were named first team All-Conference.
SBVC was seeded 6th in Southern California Regional's and hosted the 11th seeded Mission Viejo Saddleback Gauchos (23-13) in a "best 2 out of 3" series. SBVC was hampered versus their Orange Empire Conference opponents in game one, losing 18-8 on May 1st, and losing in game two, 11-3 on May 2nd.
The team finished the 2015 season with record of 23-15, had a 11-6 record on the road and an 11-7 record at home. Between March 10th and April 14th, SBVC had won 13 straight games, which included sweeps over Foothill Conference rivals Barstow, Cerro Coso, Victor Valley and College of the Desert, along with series wins over Chaffey and Rio Hondo. Interestingly enough, the entire starting outfield and all three starting pitchers for SBVC were named All-Foothill Conference.
Information, Photos & Story provided by SBVC Sports Information.