STANDISH, ME – The New England Intercollegiate Baseball Association (NEIBA) has announced the 2011 All-New England Teams and three Saint Joseph's College players have been honored.
Senior outfielder Todd Keneborus (Hollis Center, ME/Cheverus) has garnered First Team honors for the second consecutive season while sophomore pitcher Chad Rafferty (Keene, NH/Keene) and sophomore first baseman Mike Pratt (Dartmouth, MA/Bishop Stang), both Second Team honorees, have earned the first regional accolades of their respective careers as Second Team selections.
Keneborus, a D3baseball.com and ABCA/Rawlings All-America honoree as a junior, heads into the NCAA Tournament hitting .426 (60-141) with 37 runs, 10 doubles, five home runs, 39 RBI, a .631 slugging percentage and a .509 on-base percentage. He leads the Monks in runs, hits, homers, RBI, slugging, OBP, walks (19), HBP (9) and IBB (7) and has four steals in four attempts. Also an excellent outfielder, the two-time GNAC Player of the Year and First Team All-GNAC selection has not made an error in 96 chances as the team's starting right fielder.
In 158 career games, Keneborus has hit .402 (208-518) with 140 runs, 39 doubles, 21 triples, 14 home runs, 149 RBI and 20 stolen bases. He is the Monks' all-time leader in triples and ranks fourth in hits, batting average, slugging (.639), extra-base hits (74) and total bases (331) and is currently fifth all-time in RBI.
Rafferty, a 2011 Third Team All-GNAC honoree, is in the midst of a breakout season on the mound and has been dominant in his starts leading up to the NCAA tourney. The second-year righty is currently 5-1 with a 1.82 ERA and 57 K's in 54.1 innings and, with 43 hits in 195 at bats, opponents are hitting just .221 against him. Recently, Rafferty has notched back-to-back complete game shutouts, with wins over Johnson & Wales and Bowdoin College, and has not yielded a run with 22 strikeouts and 14 hits allowed in his last 21 innings pitched.
Pratt is one of just three Monks, along with Keneborus and outfielder Sam Butts '13 (Saco, ME), to have appeared in all 43 games this spring. He enters regional tourney play hitting .396 (55-139) with 23 runs, a program-record 22 doubles, three home runs, 35 RBI and a .619 slugging percentage. A third baseman as a rookie, Pratt moved across the diamond this spring and collected 2011 First Team All-GNAC honors as a first baseman.
Saint Joseph's, 30-13 overall and 12-2 in Great Northeast Athletic Conference (GNAC) play this season, defeated Suffolk University in the GNAC Championship at Larry Mahaney Diamond on May 1st to claim an automatic qualifier into the NCAA DIII Baseball Tournament. With the bid, the Monks will appear in the NCAA's for the fifth time in the last six years.
St. Joe's has been awarded the #6 seed in the New England Regional Tournament and will face #3 Wheaton College at Whitehouse Field in Harwich, Massachusetts at 4:30 PM this afternoon. Winners of the eight regional tournaments around the nation advance to the DIII World Series, which will begin on May 27th and be played in Appleton, Wisconsin.
