TERRE HAUTE, Ind. – Missouri State’s Spencer Nivens is the Missouri Valley Conference Player of the Year, Zack Stewart is the Freshman of the Year, four Bears made the all-MVC First Team and six total earned All-Valley recognition Monday evening at the pre-tournament banquet ahead of this week’s MVC Baseball Championship. MoState’s six total all-conference performers are the program’s most since have nine players on all-MVC teams in 2018.
The Bears are the No. 2 seed in this week’s MVC Tournament at Bob Warn Field in Terre Haute and begin play Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. Central against an opponent that will be determined after Tuesday’s opening-round games.
Missouri State Awards Summary
Spencer Nivens (R-So., OF, Columbia, Mo.) – Joe Carter Player of the Year, First Team, Defensive Team
Cam Cratic (Gr., DH, Madison, Wis.) – First Team
Brandt Thompson (Jr., RHP, Eden Prairie, Minn.) – First Team
Garrett Ferguson (Fr., RHP, Blue Springs, Mo.) – First Team
Zack Stewart (Fr., OF, Lebanon, Mo.) – Freshman of the Year, Second Team
Hayden Minton (Sr., RHP, Collinsville, Okla.) – Honorable Mention
Spencer Nivens
Missouri State’s sixth MVC Player of the Year and first since Jake Burger in 2017, Nivens is hitting .357 with 14 homers and 45 RBI on the season and leads the MVC with a .681 slugging percentage. He ranks in the top three in the MVC in average, runs (54), hits (76), triples (6) and total bases (145). Nivens has started all 52 games in center field, reaching safely in 49 contests, while his six triples rank 10th nationally and are the most by a Bear since 2016. He hit for the eighth cycle in school history and first since 1998 in February, and his 35 total extra-base hits are the most by a Bear since both Burger and Jeremy Eierman reached that total in 2017. MoState’s previous MVC Player of the Year winners are Bill Mueller (1993), Steve Hacker (1995), Matt Cepicky (1999), Brayden Drake (2009) and Burger (2017).
Cam Cratic
The MVC leader in batting average at .431 in conference games, Cratic batted 28-for-65 in his 19 league contests while ranking sixth with a .646 slugging percentage and seventh with a .464 on-base figure. Cratic batted .545 during a career-best 10-game hit streak in April and collected multiple hits in eight Valley games. Cratic also belted Missouri State’s first pinch-hit home run since 2019 on April 2 at Illinois State, and is batting .319 with six homers and 22 RBI for the full season.
Brandt Thompson
Thompson is the first MSU starting pitcher to earn first-team all-Valley accolades since current Kansas City Royal Dylan Coleman in 2018. He ranks third in the MVC in ERA (3.14) and wins (6), and sits fourth in strikeouts (82) and innings pitched (80.1). Thompson ranks fifth nationally with 16 games started and has two starts this season with nine-plus strikeouts and no walks. His 12 K, no walk performance on March 10 versus SIUE was a first at Missouri State since at least 2012.
Garrett Ferguson
The only freshman on the MVC First Team this season, Ferguson’s 1.98 ERA leads all MVC pitchers with at least 25 innings, and he went 3-0 with five saves in conference games, allowing a run on eight hits in 16 innings for a 0.56 ERA. Ferguson ranks fourth nationally among freshmen with six saves on the full season, and is the first MSU freshman to make the First Team since Dakota Kotowski in 2019. The right-handed closer is holding opponents to a .154 batting average this season, dropped that number to .146 in league contests, and enters the postseason with nine consecutive scoreless innings over his last seven outings. Ferguson has allowed no runs in 15 of 20 appearances this season, and yielded multiple runs just once.
Zack Stewart
Missouri State’s 10th MVC Freshman of the Year and first since Kotowski in 2019, Stewart leads the Valley this season with 18 doubles and 58 RBI. He is batting .311 on the year with 11 homers and drove in 35 in conference games, also good for the league lead. Stewart’s RBI total trails only Ryan Howard (66 in 1999) among true freshmen at Missouri State, and his 31 extra-base hits are behind only future big-leaguers Jason Hart (36 in 1996) and Howard (33 in 1999). Among freshmen nationally, Stewart ranks 10th in RBI and sixth in doubles.
Hayden Minton
Minton leads the MVC with 89 strikeouts on the season and owns a 4.44 ERA and 5-2 record in 14 starts. Minton ranks fifth in the league with 77 innings pitched and struck out six or more batters in nine games with a high of 10 on March 12 versus SIUE. He is the author of Missouri State’s only complete game of the season, throwing a five-hitter without allowing an earned run on April 21 against Belmont. Minton also retired 18 consecutive hitters over the span of two March starts, the longest streak by an MSU pitcher since 2019.
