MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — The countdown to Opening Day of the college baseball season is underway and West Virginia will begin its 2023 slate of games on Feb. 17.
When Randy Mazey’s group takes the field for the first time this year, they will do so with one of the best catchers in the country squatting behind home plate.
Redshirt senior backstop Dayne Leonard has been ranked as the No. 20 catcher in the NCAA, according to D1baseball.com’s preseason player rankings list.
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Leonard was WVU’s top hitter last season, in terms of batting average, finishing the season with a .331 clip. He also paced the Mountaineers with a .426 on-base percentage and finished third on the club in OPS (.877).
Defensively, Leonard threw out 13 would-be base stealers, tied for the fourth-most in the Big 12 Conference. Among the catchers in the league who caught at least 10 runners trying to steal, Leonard had the second-best success rate, nabbing 35 percent of runners trying to take the extra base.