Three Bruins baseball standouts named All-Americans

While mock draft season is fully upon us in college baseball, the All-American list by Collegiate Baseball was announced, and three of your UCLA Bruins made the cut.

Pitchers Zach Pettway and Holden Powell, and shortstop Matt McLain were each named to the list with Pettway leading the charge with First-Team honors. McLain and Powell each garnered the Second-Team nod.

Pettway was arguably one of the nation’s best pitchers during the 2020 season, posting a ridiculous 29-1 strikeout-to-walk ratio and landing as D1Baseball’s ‘most impressive pitcher’ in the Pac-12. He was 3-0 in the shortened season.

Powell allowed no runs and struck out 20 batters in nine and a third innings pitched in relief. He had three saves and allowed all of three hits this past season.

McLain was, simply put, the UCLA leader this past season. The sophomore was leading the team in essentially every major batting category when the season was shutdown during the coronavirus pandemic. He had 19 RBIs, 23 hits, four home runs and a total of 36 bases with an OPS of 1.043, each of which led the Bruins at the time of the shutdown. He batted .471 in the Frisco College Classic and had seven RBIs in the three-game tournament as he was selected as MVP and UCLA as victors due to the shutdown.

It’s great honors for what was a promising season of baseball for your Bruins, and should lead into a great 2021 campaign with McLain back and all three All-Americans potentially returning.