Heck, Gridley Earn Southeastern Conference Honors
STARKVILLE, Miss. – Two Mississippi State baseball players earned All-Southeastern Conference honors in a vote by the league’s 14 head coaches, the league announced Monday. Senior infielder Seth Heck was named SEC Scholar-Athlete of the Year for the second straight season, while fellow infielder Ryan Gridley was selected to the All-SEC Freshman Team.
Heck joins Emeel Salem of Alabama (2006-07) as the only two players in league history to be voted the top baseball scholar-athlete in consecutive seasons. Thanks to Sam Frost in 2013 and Heck the last two years, MSU is now the only school to have won the award in three straight seasons.
A 2015 Capital One Academic All-District First Team member, Heck was voted the winner after finishing the spring semester with a perfect 4.0 GPA. The Tacoma, Washington, native graduated May 9 with a degree in business administration and earlier this month was named MSU’s male nominee for the H. Boyd McWhorter Scholar-Athlete Post-Graduate Scholarship, given to the league’s top scholar-athlete.
Gridley was named one of the top freshmen in the league after starting 47 of his team’s 54 games. The Milton, Georgia, native hit .243 with 26 runs, 21 RBIs, 14 walks and nine doubles. Defensively, the freshman finished third in the SEC with 170 assists and helped MSU finish second nationally in double plays by taking part in 34 of State’s 63 twin killings.
Scheduled to play for the Waynesboro Generals in the Valley Baseball League this summer, Gridley is the first shortstop at MSU to be named to the SEC’s All-Freshman team since Adam Frazier in 2011. Frazier eventually earned All-America honors in 2013 after leading the NCAA with a school-record 107 hits, before being drafted in the sixth round by the Pittsburgh Pirates in that summer’s Major League Baseball Draft.
For more information on Gridley, and the rest of the Diamond Dawgs playing summer ball, follow the team on Twitter, like them on Facebook and join them on Instagram by searching for “HailStateBB.” You can also find all-access coverage of the program on SnapChat by searching for “HailStateSnap.”
SEC Baseball Scholar-Athlete of the Year at MSU
2015 – Seth Heck
2014 – Seth Heck
2013 – Sam Frost
1998 – Jeremy Jackson*
1990 – Burke Masters*
* Beginning in 2004, the SEC introduced an award specific to baseball only. In 1990 and 1998, Masters and Jackson were named the overall SEC Scholar-Athlete of the Year, regardless of sport.
All-SEC Freshman At MSU
2015 – Ryan Gridley, SS
2014 – Gavin Collins, C
2012 – Jonathan Holder, RP
2011 – C.T. Bradford, OF; Adam Frazier, SS
2010 – Chris Stratton, SP
2009 – Nick Routt, SP
2007 – Connor Powers, 3B