Brad Zebedis 2011 Valley Baseball League MVP

The 2011 honors for Brad Zebedis of the Strasburg Express just keep rolling in and you can now add the Valley Baseball League MVP award to the list. Zebedis, a rising sophomore at Presbyterian College, led the league in hitting with a .420 batting average, as well as on base percentage (.490), hits, doubles, and total bases. For good measure, he also won the Home Run Hitting Contest at the VBL-Cal Ripken League All Star game.

Zebedis was also recently named to the Perfect Game Summer Collegiate All American team, and for his outstanding freshman year at Presbyterian College was honored on All American teams named by NCBWA, Collegiate Baseball, Louisville Slugger, and Baseball America, among others.

During the fall of 2010, well before his first college baseball game, the Presbyterian coaching staff described Zebedis as simply one of the best pure hitters they had ever seen, a sentiment now shared by Valley Baseball League pitchers from all across the country.  Late in the summer season, pitchers from an opposing team described him as simply “the best hitter we’ve seen-anywhere, anytime, any league”, and remarked that at times he appeared to have the ability “to track pitches and make adjustments while the ball was  in flight almost to the literal point of contact with the bat”.    This comment was made shortly after he deposited an 0-2 slider on the low inside corner over the right field fence at First Bank Park.  

Head Coach Butch Barnes commented that “Brad is simply a wonderfully talented and unique baseball player, as well as an outstanding young man-he obviously has tremendous ability, his work ethic is off the chart, and he plays with a quiet humility.  If we could ever keep his cap clean, he might be the perfect baseball player.”  The latter comment was a reference to Brad’s cap becoming inexplicably filthy almost upon arrival in Strasburg and staying that way all summer.    

Zebedis,  son of Frank and Michele Zebedis, is from Rock Hill, South Carolina.  His parents and grandparents made the drive to Strasburg several times this summer, quickly got into purple gear, and became fan favorites.  Their visits next summer will have to be as they drive through the valley on their way north as in 2012, Brad will be playing in the Cape Cod League for the Hyannis Harbor Hawks, the 2011 West Division Champions.