"Baseball America" slights SXU athletes

By Mark Siefert

Welcome back to the Cougar Den,

Another huge week for Cougar athletics with huge wins all around and great play as we all expect. But that is not what I want to talk about this week. This is something I’ve brought up in the past but after reading this week’s issue of Baseball America, it sparked my thoughts and feelings about the lack of national respect SXU's individual athletes and teams receive.

For those who don’t know Baseball America is a national magazine that profiles baseball on all levels and is the premiere source for inside information about baseball. It is one of the most respected magazines on the market.

The article in question was a preseason preview of small college baseball in the College Preview edition, with a section on the NAIA with players to watch at each position and small snippets about random teams, including top draft prospects. With two Preseason All-Americans in shortstop John O’Brien and pitcher Jayson Koehn, you would certainly think that SXU Baseball would have at least one player to watch. Especially since Koehn was a first team All-American last year. But of course we did not have any players to watch, so I’m going to compare the stats of the people ahead of our own, and show why everyone in the SXU community should be a little perturbed.


The stats may look similar and they show that each player had great years. But if you look closely John O’Brien was clearly a more productive hitter and was a factor in many more games than his counterpart at Lewis and Clark. Jayson Koehn led the nation in ERA with a minimum of 8 starts and led most of the nation in every category. He was a first team All-American last year and posted ridiculous numbers. The pitchers at the other schools had better strikeout numbers but that is because they threw for strikeouts and not for contact, letting their teammates play defense.

I know I am a little biased because they are my teammates but I believe this goes back to the overall problem that SXU has been having with getting very little national recognition unless we go 13-1 in football, or 26-1 in basketball. I believe it should not take that and we should be getting recognition for the great players we have.

Stay classy, Cougars.

Mark Siefert is a senior social science major from Crest Hill. He is a member of the baseball team. Consideration for the student bloggers is provided by Saint Xavier University.