Baseball

ASU, UH and K-State Tabbed for Big 12 Baseball Weekly Honors

Arizona State’s Ben Jacobs (pitcher) and Jack Martinez (co-newcomer), Houston’s Xavier Perez (player) and Kansas State’s Maximus Martin (co-newcomer) were named the recipients of the Big 12 baseball weekly awards for the fourth week of the season.
 
Perez finished the week with 10 hits, four doubles, eight runs, 16 RBI and two home runs. The sophomore from Corpus Christi, Texas became the first Cougar since 2008 to drive in eight RBI in a game without hitting a grand slam. He finished .500 for the week (10-of-20) to push his season average to .378. The outfielder currently has a seven-game hitting streak and has a team-leading 20 RBI on the season.
 
Jacobs retired the first 17 batters he faced in Arizona State’s series-opening win over Gonzaga. It was the most consecutive batters retired to start a game for the Sun Devils since Ryan Kellogg’s no-hitter against Oregon State on March 23, 2013. The left-handed pitcher finished with six strikeouts, no walks, no runs and only one hit allowed over 6.0 innings pitched.
 
Martinez clinched the series for Arizona State as the senior allowed only one hit in a season-high 7.0 innings. The right-handed pitcher struck out 10 batters and became the first Sun Devil to record back-to-back outings of 10+ strikeouts since Alec Marsh did so in 2019. Martinez’s 35 strikeouts are tied for the league-most and are the most for a Sun Devil since Jon Switzer in 2001.
 
Martin drove in 12 RBI for the Wildcats in a series sweep of William & Mary and seven runs on eight hits. The junior infielder raised his batting average on the season to .524, the third highest in the country, and inflated his slugging percentage to 1.143, the second highest in the NCAA.  He became the first Wildcat to turn in a multi-homer game this season with a grand slam in the first inning followed by a three-run homer in the second inning of the series-clincher. Martin has homered in four consecutive games and three straight games in the first inning. In the series finale, Martin finished 5-for-5, a triple short of hitting for the cycle, to become the first K-State player and fourth from the Big 12 this season to turn in a five-hit day.