Four Baseball Players Earn All-Conference Selections

Four Baseball Players Earn All-Conference Selections


Four Suffolk University Baseball Players earned All-Conference recognition by the Great Northeast Athletic Conference (GNAC) for the 2012 regular season.

The Rams currently hold a 20-22-1 overall record during the season while they finished with the number four seed in the GNAC Tournament posting an 11-5 mark in league. For the fifth straight season the Rams advanced to the GNAC Tournament finals before falling to St. Joseph's College of Maine, 7-6 in the championship game. The 2012 season is the fifteenth consecutive year in row that Head Coach Cary McConnell has seen his team record at least 20 wins in a season.

Taking home first-team All-Conference honors were junior Jhonneris Mendez (Boston, Mass.) and sophomore Jake Cintolo (Wrentham, Mass.).

Mendez was an All-Conference selection as a pitcher. The junior right-hander posted a 6-3 record on the mound for Suffolk with a 2.17 earned run average in 54 innings pitched while striking out 48 hitters. Mendez made national news earlier this year as he was named NCAA Division-III Pitcher of the Week by the National College Baseball Writers Association (NCBWA) for his April 7 no-hitter versus Lasell College in which he finished just one out away from a perfect game. Mendez picked up two wins in the GNAC Tournament as he threw four innings of shutout relief in the opening round of the playoffs, a 10-inning 7-6 victory over Albertus Magnus College. Mendez then came back four days later to blank Johnson & Wales University, 8-0 in a nine-inning complete game shutout in which he allowed just six hits while striking out seven. Mendez leads all pitchers in the GNAC with a 2.17 ERA while he is tied for second with six victories and is fourth with 48 punchouts.

Cintolo earned All-Conference honors as an infielder, as the sophomore has seen time at third base, second base and first base this year for the Rams. He currently leads all hitters in the GNAC with 58 hits maintaining a .365 batting average (58-for-159) and is fifth in the league slugging a team-best .535. He is second in the league in doubles (15) and tied for third with three triples on the year. He tortured GNAC pitching as he hit at a .444 clip in conference games (24-for-54) with 10 extra-base hits. Cintolo has hit safely in 37 of 43 games this season and has recorded 15 multi-hit games.

Sophomore Devan Jones (Roslindale, Mass.) was named a second team All-Conference selection as an infielder. Jones has started all 43 games this season for the Rams hitting .327 with three home runs and 30 RBI. His five triples are a team-best and the second most in the GNAC. Jones has hit safely in 35 of 43 contests this season and in 23 of 25 games in the month of April. He was also named to the GNAC All-Tournament team as he hit .381 in the five game stretch (8-for-21) with five RBI.

Junior Chris Stanley (Orange County, Calif.) was a third-team selection as an outfielder. Stanley hit .352 (51-for-145) leading the Rams with 31 RBI on the year in 43 games played. Stanley hit .426 in league games (20-for-27) collecting the most runs batted in of any player in GNAC games with 18. Over the last 10 games including playoffs, Stanley hit at a .404 clip (17-for-42) driving in 14 runs.