April 28, 2008
SAN DIEGO - San Diego State sophomore Stephen Strasburg has been named a Louisville Slugger National Player of the Week by Collegiate Baseball magazine and is the Mountain West Conference Pitcher of the Week for his performance in the Aztecs' 4-1 win over TCU on Friday, April 25.
It marks the third straight week and fifth time in 2008 that he has won the conference award. It is also his second national pitching honor in the past three weeks.
Strasburg threw a one-hit complete-game in the Aztecs' win over the Horned Frogs this past weekend. It was his second complete-game one-hitter in his last three starts. He retired the first 18 batters he faced before a leadoff double in the seventh. A wild pitch and ground out to second scored the run. He later surrendered his only walk of the game in the same inning.
Strasburg went on to retire the side in order in both the eighth and ninth with the seventh being the only frame in which a runner reached base against him. He finished the night with 13 strikeouts including three of the game's final four outs as TCU (which came in having won 13 of its last 15) hit .034 for the contest. The run he allowed in the seventh was the first run he had given up in 34 consecutive innings going back to the Aztecs' contest at Utah on March 20.
Over his last four starts, Strasburg has recorded 61 strikeouts over 33 innings, an average of almost two K's per inning. His season total of 99 strikeouts is tied for the national lead in Division I entering this week.
San Diego State now begins a string of eight away contests with a two-game series at Arizona that gets underway on Tuesday, April 29, at 7:00 p.m. (PDT). SDSU will then resume Mountain West Conference play with three contests at Air Force starting Friday, May 2, in Colorado Springs.