New Jersey City University Athletics

2012 ALL-NJAC TEAM

PITMAN, NJ (NJCUGothicKnights.com) | It was a good season to be a New Jersey City University freshman baseball player from Colonia, NJ. Freshman first baseman ALEX WEINSTEIN (Colonia, NJ/JFK-Iselin) and rookie right fielder MATTHEW WAGNER (Colonia, NJ/Colonia) have been named All-New Jersey Athletic Conference for the 2012 season in voting by the league's 10 head coaches announced on Wednesday.
 
Weinstein earned Second-Team All-NJAC accolades while Wagner took home Honorable Mention All-NJAC status. They were the only two freshmen to be named to the All-NJAC first, second or honorable mention teams among 34 players who received post-season honors from the conference.
 
“It's a great accomplishment in our conference to be recognized at all, let alone in your freshman year, which is quite an accomplishment in itself,” said first-year head coach JERRY SMITH. “The fact that we have two freshmen [on the All-NJAC team] shows the direction the program is going in.”
 
Weinstein, a red-shirt last season at Saint Peter's College as a pitcher after playing high school baseball for Smith at JFK-Iselin, made an immediate impact for the Knights at first base while playing in all 39 games (37 starts). He had the  difficult task of being in the heart of NJCU's lineup every day, batting third (11 games), cleanup (13 games) and fifth (11 games) in 35 of 37 starts.
 
For the season he batted .252 with 33 hits (131 at bats), 18 RBIs, 17 runs scored and eight extra base hits (five doubles, three homeruns) for 47 total bases (.359 slugging). He walked 11 times and was hit by four pitches to produce a .314 on-base rate. He was 6-for-9 in stolen bases and had nine sacrifices, including seven sac flies—tying for second most in single-season school history.
 
“His familiarity with the way I ran things made the transition easy for him and also a little easier for myself [as a college coach] because he was able to work with different guys and give a player's perspective of how I run things and what I look for,” Smith noted.
 
“[In terms of his performance this season], it was about where I thought it would be coming off a red-shirt year. Baseball is a tough enough sport, let alone when you have a year off and you're not hitting, and at Saint Peter's he was primarily a pitcher, Smith added. “So to do what he did offensively is a testament to his baseball skills and athletic ability and we expect even more from him moving forward.”
 
Nationally, Weinstein who has been among the NCAA Division III leaders in sac flies all year, is currently tied for No. 2 in the nation in the category through games of April 29; that ranking is a season high.
 
Defensively at first he held a .962 fielding percentage (283 putouts, 23 assists, 12 errors, 318 chances) and helped turn 26 of NJCU's 31 double plays.
 
On the mound he had a team-best 2.25 ERA in five relief appearances, allowing just two runs and seven hits in 8.0 innings, with four strikeouts and three walks. NJAC hitters batted just .259 against him. All five appearances came in NJAC games.
 
On the young team, Weinstein led the club in homeruns, sac flies, walks (tied with Wagner) and listed tied for second in RBIs, tied for third in doubles, fourth in steals and fifth in runs scored.
 
In NJAC action (18 games/17 starts) his numbers were even better, batting .274 (17-for-62) with seven runs, six RBIs, two doubles and two homers with 25 total bases (.403 slugging) and a .329 on base and .973 fielding percentage, adding two sac flies.
 
Wagner was not the starting right fielder when the season began but won the job outright after proving to be an all-around productive player in every area. A .333 hitter overall (39-for-117), he provided 19 runs, 16 RBIs, five doubles and 44 total bases (.376 slugging) with 11 walks for a .391 on base percentage. He was 4-for-5 in stolen base chances.
 
Defensively, he proved to be one of the top outfielders in the NJAC with a dangerous arm that registered four outfield assists. In 88 chances he made just one error for a .989 fielding percentage, and made numerous diving catches or running grabs in the gap to take away extra base hits.
 
“We always knew he had the ability to start and for the first few games of the season we wanted him to see the speed of the college game before we thrust him into the lineup,” Smith said about Wagner, one of a handful of true freshmen on the 2012 squad.
 
“Matt was our most consistent player,” Smith described. “We talk about that a lot to the players [consistency]. We felt we lacked consistency this year and to be an elite team and a playoff team to need to be consistent. We went through stretches this year where we were very inconsistent—with our hitting , fielding, pitching. He was the one player who was consistent the whole season once he got into the starting lineup.”
 
Wagner had NJCU's highest on-base percentage of any regular player and tied for the team lead in walks. He was tied for second on the team in batting average, tied for third in doubles, fourth in runs scored and hits, ranked fifth in slugging and total bases, and tied for fifth in RBIs.
 
Wagner finished the season with an active seven-game hitting streak and recorded 12 multi-hit games during the season (third on the team), batting primarily in the sixth (14 games) and seventh spots (10 games).
 
Wagner's numbers in conference games were outstanding and he started all 18 NJAC contests. He batted .353 (24-68) with nine RBIs, six runs and two doubles for 26 total bases (.382 slugging) and was 2-for-3 in steals. He owned a .380 on-base rate in NJAC games and was flawless defensive in 47 chances, including a pair of outfield assists (1.000 fielding).