Two Mason baseball grads earn freshman of the year honors. La Salle grad 1st team Big 10

Two former Mason High School baseball standouts were recently named freshmen of the year in their college baseball conferences.

Mason High School graduate Jake Hanley, a freshman on the Indiana University baseball team, was named the Big Ten Freshman of the Year heading into this week’s conference tournament. He led the Comets to the Division I state championship in 2024 as the Ohio player of the year, producing clutch hits and pitching performances throughout the postseason.

The freshman hit 14 home runs and drove in 52 runs while starting all 54 games this year for the Hoosiers.

The Mason graduate led all freshmen in the Big Ten in batting average (.338), hits (71), home runs (14) and RBIs (52). He also became a defensive star after taking over the first-base position. He failed to commit an error through the whole season in over 400 chances.

The 6-foot-6 first baseman became the fourth player in program history to be named Big Ten Freshman of the Year. 

Hanley started all 54 games of the regular season at first base and worked his way into the cleanup spot by the end of the season. He was one of two players to start every game.He began his career on a 10-game hitting streak and never stopped hitting from there. The power began to come for Hanley late in the season. He hit his first home run on March 14 (vs. Ohio State) and finished the year with three multi-home run games. In conference action alone, he hit .331 with nine home runs, five doubles and 29 RBIs. He had hits in 39 of 54 games – 21 of those being multi-hit efforts.He is the fourth IU player to win the Big Ten Freshman of the Year award. He joins Alex Dickerson (2009), Sam Travis (2012) and teammate Devin Taylor (2023) as the winners of the honor. The first two players went on to play in the big leagues and Taylor is a likely top-40 draft pick this summer.

Taylor, a La Salle High School graduate, was named first-team All-Big Ten for the third time in his career, becoming the first IU player since Mickey Morandini (1986-88) to accomplish the feat. The Lancers graduate hit .366 with 16 home runs and a career high 60 RBIs. He had 75 hits and finished top three in the Big Ten with 51 walks.The likely first-round draft pick in next year’s MLB draft never failed to make the All-Big Ten First Team and is one of just three players in program history to do it three times. He was recently named a semifinalist for the Golden Spikes Award and is on his way to repeating as an All-American in 2025.

Indiana, 31-23 overall, is the No. 6 seed in the Big Ten Tournament, which began Tuesday in Omaha.

Mason is enjoying two freshmen of the year this spring. Mason 2023 graduate Sean Krueckeberg, a redshirt freshman playing for NCAA Division II Ashland, is the Freshman of the Year in the Great Midwest Athletic Conference.

He is hitting .358 with 42 runs scored, a team-high 13 doubles, a team-high-tying two triples and 36 RBIs, and 10 stolen bases. His .570 slugging percentage is the highest on the team among qualifiers.

Krueckeberg was the GMC player of the year in 2023 and second team all-state. In 2022, he and Hanley helped the Comets to the state semifinals.

Ashland finished 37-19 this year and 24-8 in the Great Midwest, which also includes local Thomas More University.

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