The Joliet Slammers presented by ATI Physical Therapy are proud to announce Melvin Rodriguez has been named Week 12 Frontier League Player of the Week as chosen by Pointstreak, the official statistical provider of the Frontier League and the Independent Professional Baseball Federation.
2017 All-Star Melvin Rodriguez is the first Joliet Slammer to win the weekly award this season. Last week, the Joliet Slammers traveled to Sauget, Illinois to take on the Gateway Grizzlies then returned home to host the West Division leader, the Florence Freedom. One of Melvin’s best games of the week was against the Grizzlies on Wednesday night. In the contest, he went 3 for 3 with a run and a walk. When the Slammers returned home, the lefty went 3 for 5 on Saturday with two runs scored, an RBI and a double. To recap the week, he went 11 for 25 (.440), with eleven hits, two doubles, six RBI and three walks.
The Juana Diaz, Puerto Rico native is in his second season with the Slammers after being drafted by the Washington Nationals in the 2015. The 5’10 second baseman is batting .313 on the season. Rodriguez has forty-five runs scored, sixteen doubles, a triple, nine home runs, thirty-six RBI and twenty-one walks. In sixty-two games played, Rodriguez has a .961 fielding percentage with one-hundred and sixty three assists.
The Slammers (30-34, 5th in East) lost both series last week against the Grizzlies and the Freedom 2-1. This week, the Slammers will travel to Windy City (36-29, 2nd in East) then Schaumburg (44-21, 1st in East) to try and get back above .500.