KEENE, N.H. – Keene Swamp Bats right-handed pitcher Jeff Thompson (Greenville, IN/Louisville) has earned New England Collegiate Baseball League (NECBL) Top Pro Prospect and NECBL First-Team honors from the league and coaches, it was announced earlier today.
Thompson posted dominant numbers in the 2011 regular season going 2-2 overall with a 1.90 earned run average (ERA) in eight games (all starts). Thompson, a right-hander from Louisville, finished third in the league in strikeouts with 53 on the season in 38 innings pitched while only issuing 15 walks and giving up 27 hits.
Over his eight starts, Thompson held opponents to a miniscule .197 batting average and compiled a 3.53:1 strikeout-to-walk ratio and a 1.1053 walks-plus-hits-per-innings-pitched (WHIP).
In the NECBL Playoffs, Thompson outperformed his regular season totals.
Thompson matched his regular season wins total in only two starts going 2-0 with a 0.70 ERA. In those two starts, the right-hander pitched twelve-and-two-thirds innings allowing seven hits, four walks and one earned run. Thompson struck out 15 over his 12-plus innings of work and held opponents to a .156 batting average.
Thompson capped his stellar summer in his last start of the playoffs blanking the Holyoke Blue Sox, 4-0, over six-plus innings in game three of the Western Division Championship striking out 10 batters at home to push Keene into the NECBL Championship Series.
Thompson’s 10-strikeout performance against the Blue Sox on August 8th matched his season-high from earlier in the summer as the 6-foot-6 righty punched out 10 in a 7-6 win over the Mystic Schooners on July 8.
Thompson is the second Keene Swamp Bat two win the award in recent years as Adam Conley (Washington State) garnered Top Pro Prospect honors in 2009. Conley was most recently taken in the second round (72nd overall) in the 2011 Major League Baseball (MLB) First-Year Player Draft.
