College Baseball Daily kicks off our countdown to the start of the 2012 College Baseball season by checking in on the Top 100 Players in the country. We will be providing one player per day until we reach number 1.
We start off the countdown today at number 100 with Dartmouth senior shortstop Joe Sclafani from Palm City, Florida and attended Jensen Beach High School. He was a four year letter winner in baseball for Coach Todd Belowich. He helped lead the team as the starting shortstop to a 41-14 record as a junior and senior winning the District 14 title and the Regional runnerup in his final two seasons.
Sclafani made an immediate impact into the Dartmouth Big Green lineup as a freshman as he appeared in 44 games hitting .339
with two homers and 35 RBI. At the midseason point of the season, he was moved up to the leadoff role for the Big Green. He ended up hitting .350 at the top of the order with 46 runs and 28 RBIs leading the squad to a 25-7 record when he led off. He was named the Ivy League Rookie of the Year and named First Team All-Ivy League at shortstop. Joe played the summer of 2009 in the NYCBL with the Amstredam Mohawks. Things didn’t go exactly as played with him struggling at the plate hitting .212 with two homers and 18 RBI in 35 games. He did walk 20 times while striking out on only eight times in 99 at bats.
As a sophomore in 2010, Sclafani had a slight dropoff in stats hitting .325 with three homers and 23 RBI in 44 games. Expectations were high coming into the season as Baseball America named him the Ivy League Player of the Year. Sclafani reached base safely in 41 of the 44 games in which he played while stealing two bases in a game on four different occasions. Clutch was the right word for Sclafani throughout the year as he picked up several key hits including a two run homer against Miami (FL) in the NCAA Regional and picking up two hits in the Regional victory over Florida International.
Sclafani continued to be the everyday shortstop for the Big Green as a junior in 2011 playing in 42 games while hitting .349 with four homers and 34 RBI. He ended up breaking a Dartmouth record for triples with eight triples on the year which stood for 73 years in Hanover. He led the Ivy League with a career-high 60 hits and ranked among the top 10 in no less than 10 offensive categories — runs (46, second), total bases (100, second), slugging (.581, fourth), doubles (12, fifth), RBIs (34, fifth), batting (.349, sixth), walks (19, seventh) and on-base percentage (.414, 10th). He spent the summer of 2011 in the Coastal Plains League with the Morehead City Marlins. He led the team in hitting at .305 with two homers and 16 RBI while playing in 42 games. He was named the eighth best prospect in the league by Baseball America.
You can check out the rest of our 2012 Top 100 Players Countdown by clicking here.
