Submitted by SRU Sports Information Director Bob McComas
DAVENPORT, Iowa — Former Slippery Rock University baseball standout Matt Adams was named Tuesday to the West Division roster for the Midwest League All-Star Game.
Adams earned his All-Star Game invitation to play in the June 22 game at Parkview Field in Fort Wayne, Indiana, by hitting .269 with 17 doubles, seven home runs and 30 RBIs for the lower of the St. Louis Cardinals’ Class A affiliates, the Quad Cities River Bandits.
The 6-foot-3, 230-pound Adams, who also currently has a .448 slugging percentage and .319 on base percentage, leads the River Bandits (2nd place in the West Division) in both doubles and home runs, ranks second in total hits with 57, third in runs scored with 31 and fourth in RBIs. He is tied for fifth among Midwest League players in both doubles and home runs.
Adams, a native of Philipsburg and graduate of Philipsburg-Osceola High School, has quickly established himself as one of the minor-league prospects in the Cardinals’ organization.
The franchise’s 23rd-round (699th overall) selection in the 2009 amateur entry draft, Adams was named as the Scout.com/The Cardinal Nation Rookie Player of the Year at the end of his first professional season.
Adams began his professional career with the Cardinals’ rookie-league team, the Johnson City (Tenn.) Redbirds of the Appalachian League. The left-handed-hitting first baseman batted .365 with six doubles, six home runs, 25 RBIs, a .574 slugging percentage and .406 OBP in 32 games with the Redbirds.
Midway through the 2009 season, Adams was promoted to the Cardinals’ short-season Class A affiliate, the Batavia (N.Y.) Muckdogs of the New York-Penn League. He continued his torrid hitting pace there and had a .346 average, 11 doubles, four HRs, 27 RBIs, a .523 slugging percentage and .394 OBP in 31 games with the Muckdogs.
Adams’ success to date on the professional level is the latest chapter in a history of offensive prowess shown by him. He had a school-record .495 average, the best for an NCAA Division II player, in 2009, his third and final collegiate season at SRU.
Adams earned All-America honors in each of his three seasons at SRU, capped off by first-team honors in 2009 from both Daktronics, Inc. (Division II sports information directors) and the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association. He was also the Daktronics national “Player of the Year.”
Adams earned second-team All-America status in 2009 from the American Baseball Coaches Association and was named as the Atlantic Regional “Player of the Year” by Daktronics, the ABCA and the NCBWA and by the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference-Western Division head coaches as the division’s “Player of the Year.”
The first-team All-America honors in 2009 completed an ascent up the national honors list. He earned third-team NCBWA All-America status as a freshman in 2007 and was a second-team NCBWA All-America selection in 2008, as well as being named to honorable mention ABCA All-America status.
Adams was also the recipient of three straight all-region citations from the ABCA, Daktronics and the NCBWA and earned All-PSAC-West first-team honors in each of his three collegiate seasons. He was the PSAC-West Rookie of the Year in 2007..
In addition to his batting average school record, Adams also set a new school record for single-season slugging percentage and tied the SRU single-season records for hits and doubles.
He also finished his collegiate career as the owner of the school’s career batting average (.451) and slugging percentage (.749) records.
