BATON ROUGE — Chase Burch of Southeastern Louisiana, Jared Bradford of LSU and Michael Bartek of Nicholls State were named Tuesday as the Louisiana Sportswriters Association Baseball Players of the Week.
Burch, a junior designated hitter from Fultondale, Ala., was named Hitter of the Week as he helped Southeastern to a 3-1 week that included a pair of shutouts and its first series win against Lamar in Hammond since joining the Southland Conference.
Burch batted .500 (8-for-16) in four games, with 10 RBI, four runs, four doubles, a .750 slugging percentage and a .500 on-bass percentage.
Burch went 3-for-4 in Sunday’s finale versus Lamar, delivering a two-out, two-run double in the eighth inning that sealed the win. He drove in four runs in the nightcap of a doubleheader on Saturday, helping Southeastern to a 10-0 win in eight innings.
Bradford and Bartek shared the Pitcher of the Week designation.
Bradford, a junior right-hander from Hueytown, Ala., became the SEC leader in wins last weekend with two victories over third-ranked Arkansas in Fayetteville. Bradford (10-2) earned a relief win on Friday night and a victory as a starter on Sunday to lead the Tigers to their third series win this season against a Top 15 team.
Bradford fired 39 pitches in three innings on Friday night as LSU recorded a 6-5 win. He registered no walks and three strikeouts and worked a perfect ninth inning after the Tigers had broken a 5-5 tie in the top of the frame.
He returned to the mound as a starter on Sunday, throwing 85 pitches in five innings of work and limiting Arkansas to two runs on six hits with no walks and two strikeouts. Bradford threw a total of 124 pitches in the two victories as he improved to 7-1 in SEC games. He has either a win (seven) or a save (three) in 10 of LSU’s 11 SEC victories this season.
Bartek, a senior right-hander from Spring, Texas, tossed a two-hit complete-game shutout Sunday afternoon to lead the Colonels to a 5-0 victory over Texas-Arlington and help Nicholls complete a three-game sweep over the Mavericks. It was Bartek’s first complete game and shutout of his career.
In addition to allowing just two hits, Bartek also tied a season high with six strikeouts. It was the first complete-game shutout by a Nicholls pitcher since David Bourg blanked LSU-Shreveport in a seven-inning game on March 4, 2003. Bartek faced the minimum amount of batters in six of the nine innings.