Baseball's Streak of All-Americans at Eight Years with Westrick's Selection

D3baseball.com All-America Team

Eli Westrick's selection as a fourth-team D3baseball.com All-American extended The College of Wooster baseball team's run of All-Americans to eight straight seasons. The popular website dedicated to coverage of NCAA Div. III baseball unveiled its All-America team on Wednesday morning.

Westrick, the program's fifth second baseman to garner All-America honors, has been one of the best players in Region 7 over the last two seasons. The consensus American Baseball Coaches Association/Rawlings and D3baseball.com All-Region honoree earned All-North Coast Athletic Conference honors the last two seasons, which included an elevation to the all-conference first-team in 2023.

Westrick's .418 average (71-for-170) led Wooster and was 45 percentage points higher than his 2022 mark of .373 (57-for-153). The junior finished just shy of having the 17th 75-hit season in program history, and he enters his senior year sporting the 11th-highest career batting average in program history at .397 (137-for-345).

This spring, Westrick reached base a .497 clip, which ranked fourth within the conference, as did his average. He is within the top-90 nationally in average and led Wooster's team in runs (39) and doubles (14) and had 26 RBI, 23 walks, four triples, and three homers on his 2023 stat line.

Wooster's rigorous schedule, which ranks as the second-toughest per D3baseball.com's strength of schedule formula, featured 19 games against teams that were regionally ranked when the selections for the 2023 NCAA Div. III Championships were announced on May 15. He hit .388 (31-for-80) against the elite competition. The hard-to-strikeout hitter had 21 multi-hit games on the year and went 15-for-24 with seven RBI, six runs scored, two homers, and a double over a five-game stretch from April 16-22. Westrick had more than double the number of multi-hit games as he had total strikeouts on the year.

Westrick is up for ABCA/Rawlings Gold Glove consideration after turning in a sterling .983 fielding percentage with just three errors in nearly 200 chances. The elite defender was kept busy all season, evidenced by nearly five fielding chances per game.

Wooster's previous All-American second basemen include Matt Miller (2004, ABCA), Matthew Johnson (2010, ABCA and D3baseball.com), Eddie Reese (2013, ABCA and D3baseball.com), and Harry Witwer-Dukes (2019, ABCA and D3baseball.com). Wooster has had at least one All-America selection in every season since 2015. Due to COVID, no All-America teams were selected in 2020.

Since its inception in 2007, D3baseball.com has honored 40 position players and between 16 and 24 pitchers across four teams of All-Americans. With the expansion to 10 regions by the NCAA, D3baseball.com added a fifth team of All-Americans in 2022 and now honors 50 position players and between 20 and 30 pitchers.