Team USA opens play on Friday with a game against Korea at 4:30 am eastern time. They have a perfect record this summer of 16-0 after winning Haarlem Baseball Week. We will take a look at some of the top hitters on the team and top pitchers for the squad for the FISU tournament.
Shortstop Derek Dietrich leads the squad in hitting with a .324 in 14 games. The sophomore to be had a solid season with the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets after being a third round pick of the Houston Astros. He turned down a large sum of money to make it to Danny Hall’s squad but it looks like his decision was the right one. He is very solid hitter with a 4.5 speed to first base but has some defensive flaws that need to be worked on before becoming one of the elite players in college baseball.
Christian Colon of Cal-State Fullerton has been able to secure the shortstop position this summer forcing Dietrich to move to third base or become a designated hitter. Colon has been much better defensively while being second on the squad with a .317 average. He has also stolen four bases in 16 games. He should be one of the top players in the 2010 draft.
The top starting pitcher on the USA team has been Mike Minor out of Vanderbilt who picked up two wins last week against the Cuban Olympic Team to win the Haarlem Baseball Week. He has a 2-0 record with a 0.44 ERA in four appearances including three starts. He has 21 strikeouts in 20.1 innings of work while holding opponents to a .191 average.
Andrew Oliver has also made three starts on the summer where he has a 2-0 record and an ERA of 1.29. He has 19 strikeouts on the summer in 14 innings of work. He had a tough end of the Oklahoma State season which caused him to become ineligible during the NCAA Regional. He filed a lawsuit in the past two weeks against his former agent and Oklahoma State.
Stephen Strasberg has had a very good summer as he was recently named to the 2008 USA Olympic Team to take part in the upcoming Olympics in Beijing. He has a 2-0 record with a 1.80 ERA after having a successful sophomore season in which he struck out 23 batters in a nine innings game.
The full roster of Team USA is available by clicking here.
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Brad Volz is also worthy of mention for the yeoman’s work he’s done as the team’s closer. He’s been Russ Brewer good.
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