Prep Baseball Report

PBR Illinois Player Of The Week: LHP Payton Hutchings


Andy Sroka
Staff Writer

Let’s call sophomore LHP Payton Hutchings’ (Illinois) 21-strikeout perfect game on Friday his coming out party. The Coal City lefty was -- quite literally -- untouchable in his start against Beecher last week and he’ll claim the first PBR Illinois Player of the Week honor in 2018.

It’s not like Hutchings wasn’t already on our radar -- he committed to the University of Illinois last December and is ranked No. 2 among LHPs in Illinois’ 2020 class. But what Hutchings asserted on Friday was pure dominance. He threw 68 of his 89 pitches that day for strikes and struck out every single Beecher batter that dared stepped foot in the batter’s box. Hutchings himself had a better experience at the plate leading off for Coalers, reaching base two more times than the entire Bobcats lineup combined. Hutchings was 1-for-4 with a double, a walk, an RBI, and scored twice in his team’s 11-0 win.

For his efforts, Hutchings has been named the PBR Player of the Week for the week of March 19 to March 25.

Stay tuned for our Weekly Diamond Notes that will be published this Friday. There we’ll take a look at players who narrowly missed out on a Player of the Week honor but deserve some recognition nonetheless.

RELATED CONTENT