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Three finalists for the 2024 Golden Spikes Award announced

FaceProfileby:Thomas Goldkamp•06/05/24
2022 NCAA Division I Men's Baseball Championship
(Photo by C. Morgan Engel/NCAA Photos via Getty Images)

The three finalists for the 2024 Golden Spikes Award, the award given annually to the nation’s best player, have been announced.

USA Baseball announced that Arkansas‘ Hagen Smith, Georgia‘s Charlie Condon and Oregon State‘s Travis Bazzana are the finalists for this season’s award.

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The trio is among the most highly rated MLB Draft prospects in the sport.

Bazzana is currently ranked as MLB Pipeline’s No. 1 draft prospect after putting together a monster season for the Beavers. He helped his squad advance to the Super Regionals, where it will face Kentucky this weekend.

The talented second baseman has done it all en route to being named a Golden Spikes Award finalist. He became Oregon State’s all-time leader in both hits and home runs this season, bashing a Pac-12 best 28 home runs. He can also hit for average, though, checking in at .415.

He was the Pac-12 Player of the Year.

Meanwhile, Smith was one of the best pitchers in the country throughout the year, earning his way to a finalist for the Golden Spikes Award. The left-hander posted a nation’s best .144 batting average against, routinely keeping hitters off balance.

He posted a 2.04 ERA with a 9-2 record, going 84.0 innings and striking out 161 while walking just 34. Dominant, in every sense of the word.

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Arkansas, though, was eliminated in the Fayetteville Regional as the No. 5 national seed over the weekend, so Smith’s season is now complete.

Finally, Condon comes through with arguably the biggest bat of anyone in the nation, sporting a comfortable lead in the home run race this season. He has knocked out a BBCOR-era record 36 blasts, also a Georgia record. At one point this season, Condon hit homers in eight consecutive games, just one shy of the NCAA record.

How’s this for a Golden Spikes Award resume? Condon has hit .445 on the season with the 36 home runs, 77 RBI and 20 doubles. He has also drawn a whopping 55 walks, getting on base with regularity.

Like Oregon State, Georgia will be playing in the postseason still after winning the Athens Regional. The Bulldogs are set to host 10-seed NC State.