Clemson two-way standout Caden Grice wins national award

Caden Grice was instrumental in Clemson's ACC title run in the 2023 season.

by CU Athletic Communications - Tue Jun 13 11:06:18 GMT-04:00 2023

CLEMSON, S.C. – Junior lefthander and first baseman Caden Grice was named the winner of the John Olerud Two-Way Player-of-the-Year Award on Tuesday, presented by the College Baseball Foundation. Grice is Clemson’s first winner of the award that was first presented in 2010.

Grice (Greer, S.C.) was a two-way star for the Tigers in 2023. He was 8-1 with a 3.35 ERA, .196 opponents’ batting average and 101 strikeouts against 33 walks in 78.0 innings pitched over 14 starts on the mound. At the plate, the first-team All-American hit .307 with 18 homers, a triple, 15 doubles, 68 RBIs, 60 runs, a .618 slugging percentage, .411 on-base percentage and four steals in 59 games.

In his three-year Tiger career, he is 10-2 with a 3.73 ERA, .203 opponents’ batting average and 122 strikeouts against 46 walks in 94.0 innings pitched over 26 appearances (17 starts). At the plate, he is hitting .288 with 45 homers, two triples, 35 doubles, 161 RBIs, 145 runs and 12 steals in 168 games.

The award is named for the former Washington State standout who achieved success both as a first baseman and lefthander during the late 1980s and was inducted into the National College Baseball Hall of Fame in 2007.

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“I think it was just more of taking the initiative of actually taking the next step into making it a full-time thing,” Grice said of his leap forward. “I think I was just a little bit hesitant on diving into both fully like I did this year in a starting role. But once I had some talks with our pitching coach, and he was really firm on it. I kind of took it into consideration, prayed about it, and I was like, ‘yeah, why not?’ I think once I took that next step, and just it was history from there.”

But to hear Bakich tell it, Grice had just as big an impact in the locker room and away from the field as he did on it.

“He is a good Christian kid who has just been raised right,” Bakich said. “Every time we had any type of a service opportunity, whether it was a visit to a children’s hospital or reading to kids in schools, he was always the first to volunteer. It’d be so easy for the superstar to not sign autographs and not want to do service-based activities, but he was always the first one, and he signed autographs longer than anyone else on our team. He’s just the true servant leader, and that’s where I’ve seen so much growth out of him and just him really thrive.

“And it wasn’t about the draft. You never would have known he was in his draft year. You would have thought he was just a guy that could have been a walk-on who was totally invested in every single guy on the team, that had a relationship with every guy on the team and turned out to be a glue guy. He just completely surpassed my expectations of what I thought the type of person and type of player that he would be just seeing the stat sheet from the year before. Seeing how much it mattered to him to make Clemson baseball relevant again, and just put the needs of the program ahead of his own. That’s what I will forever remember about him.”