Palmer Placed on Southland Conference All-Tournament Team
5/25/2019 10:18:00 PM | Baseball
Junior righty is first 'Jacks in three years to claim All-Tournament Team honors
SUGAR LAND, Texas - At the conclusion of the 2019 Southland Conference Tournament, one SFA baseball player's performance stood out among the greats during the four-day event and for that junior right-handed pitcher Alex Palmer was named to the Southland Conference All-Tournament Team.
SFA's first Southland Conference All-Tournament Team honoree since Conner Fikes and Nick Ramos earned spots on it following the conclusion of the 2016 Southland Conference Tournament, "The Mane Event" put on a dazzling performance in SFA's Tournament opener against third-seeded Southeastern Louisiana that helped his squad capture its first victory in the league's tournament in three years.
A product of Arlington, Texas, Palmer fired a nine-inning shutout and racked up 10 strikeouts without issuing a walk in the 'Jacks 5-0 victory over the Lions last Wednesday. The righty allowed just three hits to Southeastern Louisiana to help the 'Jacks stay in the top half of the bracket. It marked just the second time in program history SFA had pitched a shutout in Southland Conference Tournament action.
Palmer's complete game effort was his fourth in a row and his fifth overall in 2019. Those five complete games helped Palmer rank fourth nationally in that statistical category. That, along with the fact that his 109 strikeouts stood as the second-most in the Southland and the 26th-most among all NCAA Division I baseball players, helped Palmer lay claim to the title of 2019 Southland Conference Newcomer of the Year and a spot on the All-Southland Conference First Team.
Through his magnificent 2019 campaign, Palmer established a new single-season program record for strikeouts and because the only SFA pitcher in the history of the program to record triple-digit strikeouts in a single season. Overall, he gave up just 5.89 hits per nine innings to rank 19th nationally in that category as of this writing.
On the year, SFA posted a 25-32 record which included a 16-14 showing in Southland Conference games. That helped the 'Jacks finish in a tie for fifth place at the conclusion of the regular season - seven spots higher than the 12th-place finish the Southland Conference Preseason Poll predicted for them back in February.
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