NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — Keene outfielder and first baseman Thomas Joseph (Jacksonville) and North Shore right-handed pitcher Luke Marshall (Stonehill) have been named the New England Collegiate Baseball League’s (NECBL) Player and Pitcher of the Week, respectively, for the sixth edition of the 2021 season.
Joseph ranked atop the league leader board in total hits for the past week, helping the first-place Swamp Bats improve to three games up in the Northern Division. He batted .500 overall (11-for-22) while scoring seven runs and driving in six more. He collected three doubles and drilled one home run and stole a base in that span, putting together a 1.295 OPS while slugging .773 and recording a .522 on-base percentage. The switch-hitting Florida native had at least one hit in all five games he played last week and posted multi-hit outings three times, including a 4-for-5 performance in a key win against Upper Valley on Sunday.
Through 17 games, Joseph is batting .347 with 25 hits, 13 runs, five doubles, three homers and 20 RBIs. He ranks in the top-five in the NECBL in batting average and total RBIs, while his OPS on the season now stands at .932. The rising senior at Jacksonville played in 25 games (20 starts) this past spring, stringing together 17 hits in 81 at-bats with eight runs, three doubles, one homer and 11 RBIs.
On the hill, Marshall turned in his best start of the summer in a suffocating performance as part of a 5-0 win at Vermont last Tuesday (July 6). He fanned nine of the 19 batters he faced while working around just a single hit and one walk issued over six scoreless innings. His WHIP for the week was a staggering 0.33 and his K/9 was 13.50.
That outing moved Marshall to 2-1 on the summer while lowering his ERA to 4.50 and WHIP to 0.92. He has fanned 29 over 24 innings with only 11 walks allowed. The Swampscott, Massachusetts, native was a Northeast-10 Conference All-League Third Team honoree this past spring after fanning 46 over 43-1/3 innings while going 2-2 on the bump.
