Ethan Long Named All-American, Drew Swift Pac-12 Defensive POTY

PHOENIX – The first batch off postseason awards were released on Wednesday ahead of the upcoming NCAA Regionals and Sun Devil Baseball found itself, as usual, well-represented.
 
Ethan Long became the 129th All-American in program history, earning a Second Team nod from Collegiate Baseball News as a Designated Hitter. Drew Swift was named the Pac-12 Defensive Player of the Year and both players earned First Team All-Pac-12 accolades.
 
Additionally, Sean McLain and Nate Baez earned All-Pac-12 Honorable Mention nods while ASU took three of the nine spots on the Pac-12 All-Defensive team with Swift taking the shortstop position, Hunter Haas at third and Joe Lampe in center field. 
 
Long is just the eighth Sun Devil in school history to earn an All-America accolade as a freshman. He joins Mike Kelly (1989), Casey Myers (1998), Kendall Carter (1981), Phil Lowery (1996), Mike Leake (2007), Ryan Kellogg (2013) and Spencer Torkelson (2018) the only other freshmen in program history to be named All-Americans.
 
Swift is the first player in program history to be named the conference Defensive Player of the Year since the league introduced the award in 2013. 
 
It is the fourth consecutive season a Sun Devil has earned an All-America honor ASU now has 129 All-Americans in school history with 63 total First-Team selections.
 
ASU now has 316 all-time Pac-12 All-Conference selections, 158 of those being First-Team selections and 158 as Honorable Mentions. 
Ethan Long – Second Team All-American (Collegiate Baseball News/Designated Hitter), First Team All-Pac-12

• Ethan Long became the 129 Sun Devil to be named an All-American with his Second Team selection by Collegiate Baseball Newspaper as a designated hitter.
• Long was also a First Team All-Pac-12 pick after he finished the regular season 22nd nationally and second in the Pac-12 with 16 home runs while finishing 13th nationally and leading the league with a .725 slugging percentage on .340 hitting. He was sixth in the league with 53 RBI.
• These numbers are made all the more incredible knowing that after the Washington series concluded on April 11, he had just one home run and 12 RBIs on the year after entering the season as the team's closer and posting four saves and no earned runs in the opening week of action before going down with a minor injury that has kept him off the bump since.
• Long is responsible for the go-ahead RBI in seven Sun Devil victories this season – three coming against ranked opponents (#16 Oregon, #18 Stanford and #23 Oregon State) and four coming by way of the long ball. He has two go-ahead home runs in the ninth inning of games this year. 
• Behind Long's bat, ASU has won five straight weekend series. He began getting hot with his go-ahead two-RBI eighth inning double off potential Stanford All-American closer Zach Grech on April 16. In the 19-game stretch that started that night and lasted until his hitless weekend against USC in the penultimate series, Long bat .444 with 40 RBI, 15 home runs, eight doubles, a 1.181 slugging percentage, a .500 OBP and an absurd 1.681 OPS. Of his 32 hits in that span, 23 were for extra bases. 
• Long is the only player in the Pac-12 to earn multiple Pac-12 Player of the Week nods this season, let alone three.  He is the first Pac-12 player to win the honor three times in a season since Hunter Bishop in 2019. Andrew Vaughn of Cal was the last non-Sun Devil to accomplish the feat thrice in one season in 2018 when he was eventually named the Pac-12 Player of the Year. He was the Unanimous National Player of the Week after the Oregon State series. 

Drew Swift – Pac-12 Defensive Player of the Year, First Team All-Pac-12

• Drew Swift  has recorded hits in 43 of 51 games he has played this season and enters the weekend with a .313 average.
• His slugging percentage sits at .469 - a notable evolution for a player who had just two extra-base hits in 55 games as a freshman and slugged just .333 as a sophomore. He has six homers this season after just having one in his first three seasons combined. 
• Swift is second on the team with 36 RBIs this season and also second with 20 two-out RBI as well. His 40 runs scored are second on the team.
• He has reached base on 31 out of 84 leadoff opportunities this season (.369).
• Swift has 20 games this season with multiple hits - just off the team lead. He has multiple hits in 28 of his last 60 games, dating back to last season. 
• Perhaps more impressive has been his defensive play at shortstop where he has just five errors on 242 chances (.978) with 158 assists and 39 double plays turned. His five errors are second among Pac-12 shortstops, though USC's Tyler Pritchard (2 errors on 178 chances) had significantly less opportunities.
• His 158 assists are third in the Pac-12, first among shortstops and just three off the Pac-12 lead. His 39 double plays turned are third in the Pac-12 and tops among shortstops.
• Swift has a 17-game streak without an error at shortstop, dating back to April 27.
• He has 479 defensive assists in his career while helping to turn 115 double plays. 
• Swift led the team in batting average last year, sitting at .365 overall on the season with a team-best 23 hits - three more than any of his teammates. He was easily been ASU's best hitter with runners in scoring position, going 11-for-24 (.524) with three more hits than any teammate. Swift had a team-best 8 multi-hit games - two more than any of his teammates - and was the only player on the squad to record a 4-hit game - doing so twice.

Sean McLain – All-Pac-12 Honorable Mention/Infielder

• Sean McLain recorded a 23-game hitting streak this season - tied for the third-longest at ASU since 1998 with Andre Ethier's 2003 23-game hitting streak. 
• McLain earned All-Pac-12 Honorable Mention honors this week.
• He is second on the team with a .333 average on the year, good for 13th in the Pac-12. 
• McLain leads the team in multi-hit games this year with 22. His nine multi-RBI games are second on the team.
• McLain has 17 doubles on the year, good for sixth in the Pac-12.
• He leads the team with 24 hits with two outs on 62 chances (.387).
• McLain has stranded just 21 runners on the base path this year, lowest among the team day-to-day starters by a significant amount.
• McLain has successfully advanced runners a team-best 51.5 percent of the time (52-of-101 chances).
• He has eight errors on 255 chances this year, though one of those errors came while playing in the outfield. Those 255 chances were second among Pac-12 second-basemen - despite missing several games.
• He has turned 46 double plays this season, four more than any other player in the league and 14 more than any other second baseman.

Hunter Haas – Pac-12 All-Defensive Team/Third Base

• Hunter Haas continues to get it done both on the plate and at the hot corner, entering the weekend with a .307 average.
• His 20 multi-hit games are second on the roster. He had a streak of seven straight games with multiple hits in April.
• His 26 hits with runners in scoring position are easily the most on the team and eight more than any other player (and come on 64 chances for a .406 average).
• Haas has posted the go-ahead RBI or unassisted go-ahead run seven times this season in ASU's 32 wins.
• He has been significantly better in clutch scenarios with a .371 average with runners on the basepath and a whopping .406 average with RISP compared to just a .240 average when the bases are empty.
• Haas has successfully advanced runners a team-high 56 times on 110 opportunities this season for a .509 average. 
• Haas has been nearly perfect over at the hot corner, with just four errors on 132 total chances while playing at third base. His other error on the year came in a spot start at shortstop. He is tied for second among third basemen in the Pac-12 with just four errors (at third base). 
• His 12 double plays turned are tops among Pac-12 third basemen. 
• Haas was named to the Pac-12 All-Defensive Team as the third baseman.

Joe Lampe – Pac-12 All-Defensive Team/Center Field

• Joe Lampe showed why he might quickly become a fan favorite for the Sun Devil faithful, hustling out doubles on routine singles, scoring sacrifce flies from second base, coming home from second on infield singles and generally providing some oomph into the bottom of the Sun Devil order.
• Lampe was one of three Sun Devils selected to the Pac-12 All-Defensive Team after not posting an error in center field in conference games all year. He finished the season with just one error and a .990 fielding percentage.
• In the opener against USC, Lampe recorded nine putouts - the most by an ASU center fielder since at least 1998. Hunter Bishop had eight in 2019 and no other player had more than seven.
• Lampe has done a solid job turning the order around in the nine-hole with a .376 OBP compared to a .292 average.
• Lampe has successfully advanced runners 50 times on 99 chances (.505).
• He has been absurd at productive outs, recording 23 runners advanced with an out this year - four more than any other player on the roster.
• He has been ASU's best player with a runner on third and less than two outs with 12 RBI - tops on the team - and a .667 average on 18 chances. 

Nate Baez – All-Pac-12 Honorable Mention/Catcher

• While Ethan Long has deservedly earned much of the credit for the recent offensive surge, the best player on the team by numbers in the last month has been catcher/utility man Nate Baez. 
• In the last 11 games, Baez leads the team with a .412 average with a team-bests in several categories with six homers, 16 RBIs and 1.000 slugging percentage. Those six homers are also his season total, making the surge more impressive. 
• He is reaching base at a .523 clip as he also leads the team with nine walks in the recent stretch - three more than any other player.
• All these numbers are notable as he didn't become a fixture in the starting lineup until the Cal series as he has fully taken on his role as the team's backstop, showing off his utility after coming to ASU as an infielder and spending much of his early career there prior to this current stretch. 
• Baez abilities earned the redshirt freshman All-Pac-12 Honorable Mention accolades.