Andrew Tri Signs with WV Miners
April 18, 2017 - Prospect League (Prospect)
West Virginia Miners News Release
Andrew Tri, a right-handed pitcher, has agreed to play with the West Virginia Miners during the 2017 Prospect League baseball season this coming summer. The Miners unveiled Tri's contract signing on the morning of April 18 and, combined with the recently announced departures of pitchers Josh Lambert and Ryan Sapp, makes 25 current roster spots announced that currently go toward completing the Miners' 28-man roster that will open the 2017 Prospect League season.
Despite being 19 years of age, Tri has not pitched an inning of baseball at the collegiate level but instead has taken a different and unique path that has landed him with the Miners. And, it is a path that already has many professional scouts watching the Mandota Heights, MN resident carefully as a potential Major League Baseball amateur draft candidate in the future.
Instead of playing college ball during his 2016-17 freshman year, which he is spending at the Shackouls Honor College at Mississippi State University, since January his baseball training activities has been under the guidance of the Driveline University facilities in Seattle, WA.
A 2016 graduate of St. Thomas Academy High School in his hometown, Tri was a 3-year letterman in both baseball and football there while taking St. Thomas deep in the Minnesota state playoffs in both sports. In football, his quarterbacking skills were integral in advancing the school to the state finals while his state playoff experience in baseball saw him appear on the mound in three games that saw him record an unblemished 0.00 earned run average for the three contests.
His exemplary baseball skills started catching the eyes of baseball followers at the age of 11 and started him on a routine that has seen him train year-round ever since with multiple current and former trainers and coaches with MLB experience. Since the age of 16, the 6-3, 230-pounder has been identified as one of the country's elite baseball prospects and has been living away from home with host families each summer since then while playing on some of the nation's most elite travel teams, mostly in Texas with the Fort Worth Cats.
There has been debate since 2015 as to whether Tri's best path to land a spot in professional baseball will be as a pitcher or as a first baseman. His rank at the 2015 Perfect Game National Championship as a hitter was 180th out of 8317 players (a ranking in the top 2 percent) ages 17 and under that were ranked. Thus, he earned a spot on Perfect Game All-Tournament Team with the lofty figures of a .429 batting average, .579 on-base percentage, and .643 slugging percentage. During that same summer of 2015, he was one of only seven high school players invited by the San Diego Padres organization to participate in a MLB pro workout. Also in 2015, he participated in the Chicago White Sox Area Code Games hitting in the cleanup spot in the batting order as a first baseman when not pitching.
There is definitely a baseball bloodline in his family to which Tri can be linked. Two of his uncles played college baseball at Notre Dame, one of whom, Dan Peltier, appeared in 108 career major league games for the Rangers and Giants from 1992-1996 and finished with a career MLB batting average of .255.
He also has a quite extensive travel history to be only 19 years old, having already visited most of our nation's 50 states and over 60 different countries around the world. Some of these visits also included him performing community and volunteer work as a way of giving back.
The Prospect League is the premier collegiate wood bat summer baseball league in the Midwest. It has been operating in its current form since 2009 while serving the summer baseball needs of top collegiate players. The 2016 Prospect League title won by the Miners was the team's third league championship in the last five seasons.
Season-long box seats and other ticket packages for the West Virginia Miners are already on sale for the 2017 Prospect League season, which begins on May 30 while the Miners home opener will be on June 1 versus the Butler (PA) Blue Sox. Persons needing more information on the Miners can contact the team either by e-mail at mktgwvminers@frontier.com or by telephone at 304-252-7233.
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Prospect League Stories from April 18, 2017
- Andrew Tri Signs with WV Miners - West Virginia Miners
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