Tyler Bortnick Makes Arizona Fall League Rising Stars Game
11/3/2011 12:00:00 AM | Baseball
Nov. 3, 2011
The 2011 Arizona Fall League Rising Stars Roster
CONWAY - Tyler Bortnick, who played baseball at Coastal Carolina from 2006-09, has been named to the prestigious Arizona Fall League Rising Stars Game, along fellow Tampa Bay Rays prospect and 2011 first-round pick Mikie Mahtook.
The sixth annual Arizona Fall League Rising Stars Game will be played this Saturday (Nov. 5) at Surprise Stadium and televised live on MLB Network at 8 pm (ET). It will also be available to stream via MLB.com. The showcase features 50 of the very best young talent in baseball.
The Arizona Fall League is filled with the best prospects in the game, so getting named to it's version of the All-Star game is a pretty big deal. According to MLB.com's prospect guru Jonathon Mayo, 28 players from the game in 2009 reached the big leagues the following season, and 24 from the 2010 game spent at least a portion of 2011 in the Majors. So while being named to participate in the game offers no guarantee of playing in the Majors, the game has definitely served as a mirror into the future of Major League Baseball.
For Mahtook and Bortnick, the game will be an opportunity to display their baseball skills in front of a national television audience, and to show Rays fans a glimpse of the future talent coming up through the franchise's fertile farm system. The duo should feel right at home, as the game will be played at Surprise Stadium, where their AFL team the Surprise Saguaros plays its home games.
Bortnick a two-time All-Big South pick and 16th-round pick of the Tampa Bay Rays in 2009, who will be the starting second basemen for the West team, had another sensational year in 2011. For the High A Charlotte Stone Crabs, Bortnick hit .306 in 132 games, while driving in 70 runs and scoring 96. He also led the Florida State League in on base percentage (.428) and stolen bases (43), and was named as both a FSL Mid-Season and FSL Post-Season All-Star. Bortnick was listed in Baseball America's Class A "Best Tools" as being the "Best Baserunner" in the Florida State League.
In what might have been a preview of the Rays' middle infield in a few years, Bortnick and shortstop Jak-Hu Lee teamed up to make a dynamic double play duo for the Stone Crabs in 2011. For the season, Bortnick had a .969 fielding percentage and was involved in 96 double plays. The Coastal Carolina alumn has slowly been heating up after a slow start to the AFL season, and is hitting .244 in 41 at bats.
