Six Mountaineers Earn All-Big 12 Honors

JJ Wetherholt and Derek Clark lead the Mountaineers with All-Big 12 First Team selections

Junior JJ Wetherholt (left) and senior Derek Clark (right) / Christopher Hall

On Monday, six members of the West Virginia University baseball team earned All-Big 12 honors as voted by the league's head coaches.

Shortstop JJ Wetherholt and starting pitcher Derek Clark were both named to the first team.  

Wetherholt was voted the 2023 Big 12 Player of the Year and came into the season selected the league’s preseason player season player of the year, but his highly anticipated season was cut short due to a hamstring injury he suffered during the opening weekend of the season. He missed 24 games and began his comeback as a designated hitter before he returned to shortstop 10 games late. He leads the Mountaineers with a .375 batting average and 1.227 OPS while tallying eight home runs, 30 RBI, 26 runs scored and tied for a team-high 28 walks for his second consecutive first team selection.

Clark finished the regular season 7-2 with a 3.05 ERA and 73 strikeouts in his lone season with the Mountaineers. He leads WVU with 79.2 innings pitched despite missing the first month of the season due to injury. Clark led the Big 12 with three complete games and is the only Big 12 pitcher to average over seven innings per start.

Third baseman Reed Chumley earned a spot on the second team.

Chumley’s team-high 15 home runs places him fifth for the program’s season home run total – one shy of Wetherholt’s 16 HRs a season ago.  The senior also led the team with 45 RBI this season while hitting .310 in his first and only year with West Virginia. He turned up his play in conference games with 10 home runs as he was one of just four players in the Big 12 to have double-digit home runs against conference opponents.

Starting pitcher Aidan Major and outfielders Kyle West and Sam White all earned honorable mention status.

Major holds a 4-4 record with a 5.75 ERA with a team-best 74 strikeouts in 61.0 innings pitched. The junior tossed seven scoreless innings against Western Kentucky in his third appearance of the season. He recorded a career-high 13 strikeouts against Oklahoma State and struck out nine versus Charlotte and Ohio State.

West hit nine of his 12 home runs in Big 12 actions. The junior hit .264 with 38 RBI in his first year with the Mountaineers.

White batted .316 with 10 home runs, 39 RBI, and a team-high 43 runs score, and was the only Mountaineer to play in all 53 games this season and earned honorable mention status at both outfielder and utility as he has played all around the diamond this season, including right and left field, third base, and catcher.

West Virginia finished fourth in the league and will meet ninth seeded TCU in the opening round of the 2024 Phillips 66 Big 12 Baseball Championship on Tuesday at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas. The first pitch is set for 1:30 p.m. EST and will stream on ESPN+.