‘Prep Ballplayer’ Award: Nolet wins second straight honor thanks to perfect game

This is our second year handing out the “Prep Ballplayer of the Week” award, and, up to this point, I’m not sure we’ve had a player make the Top 3 two weeks in a row.

It’s a pretty big area that we use as our candidate pool – Baltimore City and the six counties surrounding it.

Well, not only was St. Mary’s junior lefty Cam Nolet a final candidate in consecutive weeks, he won the honor both times.

Some credit certainly goes to the fan base of St. Mary’s Annapolis for getting the word out — Nolet received 28,000 votes combined in the last two weeks.

Still, it’s tough to argue with his selection.

To win the award in the previous week, Nolet used a 15-strikeout performance in a shutout victory against St. Paul’s. Fifteen strikeouts – that’s hard to top.

Well, Nolet topped it – in historic fashion. The Saints traveled to the West Brunswick Easter Tournament in North Carolina last week, and the 5-foot-11, 175-pounder showed that kids in Maryland can pitch a little.

He threw a perfect game, striking out 13 of the 18 batters he faced in the six-inning contest. Yeah, being perfect is a pretty solid encore to an award-winning week.

Nolet was rewarded with selection to the all-tournament team, and more than 10,000 votes from BaltimoreBaseball.com readers this week – roughly 83 percent of the vote – to beat Glenelg’s Sean Kinloch and Archbishop Curley’s Zeke Maldonado, who had excellent weeks of their own.

The vote returns Monday with three more candidates – we’re assuming Nolet won’t make it three in a row. Voting ends every Thursday night and the winner is announced each Friday.

If you’re interested in submitting candidates for our consideration, please send the player’s name, key statistics from the previous week and your contact information to Sean Naylor at sean@baltimorebaseball.com.