Press Release
In its 37th year of honoring the nation’s best high school athletes, Gatorade today
announced Blake Mitchell of Sinton High School is the 2021-22 Gatorade Texas Baseball Player of the Year. Mitchell is the first Gatorade Texas Baseball Player of the Year to be chosen from Sinton High School.
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The award, which recognizes not only outstanding athletic excellence, but also high standards of academic achievement and exemplary character demonstrated on and off the field, distinguishes Mitchell as Texas’s best high school baseball player. Now a finalist for the prestigious Gatorade National Baseball Player of the Year award to be announced in June, Mitchell joins an elite alumni association of state award-winners in 12 sports, includingDerek Jeter (1991-92, Kalamazoo High School, Mich.), Jon Lester (2001-02, Bellarmine Preparatory School, Wash.), David Price (2003-04, Blackman High School, Tenn.), Clayton Kershaw (2005-06, Highland Park High School, Texas), Rick Porcello (2006-2007, Seaton Hall Preparatory School, N.J.) and Kris Bryant (2009-10, Bonanza
High School, Nev.).
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The 6-foot-2, 200-pound junior catcher, shortstop and right-handed pitcher batted .449 with five home runs, 39 RBI and a 1.492 OPS through 35 games, leading the Pirates to the Class 4A regional finals, scheduled for June 4. The nation’s No. 4 prospect in the Class of 2023 as rated by the Prep Baseball Report and the ranked No. 6 in the country by Perfect Game, Mitchell also drew 28 walks and scored 37 runs. On the mound, he posted a 4-0 record with a 0.59 ERA along with 54 strikeouts and just seven walks in 23.2 innings, holding opposing hitters to a .100 batting average.
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A member of the National Honor Society, Mitchell has volunteered locally delivering gifts to underprivileged youth during the holidays and has donated his time to an elementary school literacy-outreach program. “Blake Mitchell can do it all,” said Wade McDaniel, head coach at Roy Miller High School. “He pitches, he catches, he plays shortstop, he hits rockets from the left side and he possesses great power at the plate. He is by far the best player that I’ve seen in my 25 years coaching at the high school level.”
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Mitchell has maintained a 4.43 GPA in the classroom. He has made a verbal commitment to play baseball on scholarship at Louisiana State University beginning in the fall of 2023.
The Gatorade Player of the Year program annually recognizes one winner in the District of Columbia and each of the 50 states that sanction high school football, girls volleyball, boys and girls cross country, boys and girls basketball, boys and girls soccer, baseball, softball, and boys and girls track & field, and awards one National Player of the Year in each sport. The selection process is administered by the Gatorade Player of the Year Selection Committee, which leverages experts including coaches, scouts, media and others as sources to help evaluate and determine the state winners in each sport.
Mitchell joins recent Gatorade Texas Baseball Players of the Year Jordan Lawlar (2020-21, Jesuit College Preparatory School of Dallas), Jared Kelley (2019-20, Refugio High School), Bobby Witt Jr. (2018-19, Colleyville Heritage High School), and Brett Baty (2017-18, Lake Travis High School), among the state’s list of former award winners.
Gatorade has a long-standing history of serving athlete communities and understands how sports instill valuable lifelong skills on and off the field. Through Gatorade’s “Play it Forward” platform, Mitchell has the opportunity to award a $1,000 grant to a local or national organization of their choosing that helps young athletes realize the benefits of playing sports. Mitchell is also eligible to submit a short video explaining why the organization they chose is deserving of one of twelve $10,000 spotlight grants, which will be announced throughout the year. To date, Gatorade Player of the Year winners’ grants have totaled more than $3.5 million across more than 1,300 organizations.
