Gophers shortstop Terrin Vavra became the first Gophers baseball player in nine years to earn All-America honors, when he was named a first team All-America by Baseball America on Thursday. The honor came one day after Vavra was named a finalist for the Brooks Wallace Award -- given to the top shortstop in the nation.
Last week Vavra was named first-team All-Big Ten Conference. Vavra, a junior from Menomonie, Wis., and the son of former Twins coach and current Detroit Tigers coach Joe Vavra, is hitting a team-high .385 for the Gophers and has committed just eight errors defensively.
Vavra leads the Gophers with 77 hits, 10 home runs, and 55 RBIs. He ranks second on the team with his 50 runs scored and has the fewest strikeouts (17) of any player with at least 150 at-bats. With a strikeout every 11.8 plate appearances, Vavra is the 40th toughest player to strike out in the nation this season.
Two other Gophers earned All-America honors on Thursday. Freshman pitcher Patrick Fredrickson was named a second-team All-America by Collegiate Baseball while freshman pitcher Max Meyer was named third-team All-America by Collegiate Baseball.
Fredrickson, from Gig Harbor, Wash. who was named the Big Ten's Pitcher and Freshman of the Year last week, is 9-0 with a 1.78 ERA. Meyer, from Woodbury who was also first-team Big Ten, is 1-2 with a 1.45 ERA and has matched the school single-season record of 16 saves.
In 2009 Gophers second baseman Derek McCallum was named a first-teamer by the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association and Baseball America while shortstop A.J. Pettersen was named a Freshman All-America recognition by the same two organizations.
