Just Baseball’s 2026 Big Ten Conference Awards

For a long time, the Big Ten was where baseball went to be mostly fine. A good conference, a handful of quality programs, and maybe two or three teams sneaking into the NCAA Tournament in a good year. The football school’s reputation followed the league everywhere it went.

That version of the Big Ten is gone.

What the conference looks like now, with UCLA, USC, Oregon, and Washington in the fold, is something college baseball hasn’t seen before. A 17-team league with legitimate national title contenders, legitimate draft factories, and enough talent on any given weekend to make the SEC pay attention.

The 2026 season was the clearest proof yet. The Bruins were the best team in the country from February through May. Nebraska made its case as a perennial postseason program. Oregon and USC both spent time ranked inside the top 15. Indiana, Washington, and Maryland all contributed players worthy of all-conference recognition.

We voted, the awards are out, and the Big Ten heads to Omaha for its conference tournament.

2026 Big Ten Baseball Award Winners

Player of the Year: SS Roch Cholowsky, UCLA

This one wasn’t a landslide, and that’s actually worth talking about.

Nebraska senior Dylan Carey put together one of the better offensive seasons this conference has seen from a position player in years. The Castle Rock, Colorado native finished the regular season hitting .342, leading the Huskers in home runs with 14, and ended the year as Nebraska’s all-time career leader in doubles, a record that had belonged to his own head coach, Will Bolt, since 2002.

He was a midseason All-American. He ranked among the national leaders in hits for most of the year. He showed up in big moments, delivered in clutch situations, and was as consistent as anyone in the Big Ten from February through May. Carey made this a real conversation.

And then there’s Roch Cholowsky, who reminded everyone why the conversation doesn’t last long.

The UCLA junior finished at .330 with 21 home runs and 59 RBI, and did it while playing shortstop at a level that makes pro scouts show up to intrasquad practices. Back-to-back Big Ten Player of the Year honors for Cholowsky, and the gap between him and the rest of the field is what it is.

Carey deserves real credit, he’s one of the best players Nebraska has produced in years, and made us think about this vote. But Cholowsky is the consensus number one overall prospect in the MLB Draft, a plus defender who also hits for average and power without a real hole in his game.

Pitcher of the Year: Mason Edwards, LHP, USC

Mason Edwards worked his way up through the USC system slowly, had injury-interrupted seasons as a freshman and sophomore. He came back to campus his junior year a different pitcher.

The final line this season is almost hard to type with a straight face. He went 8-0 with a 1.49 ERA, struck out 154 batters, gave up a .142 opponent batting average, and walked just 37 hitters all year.

He led the entire NCAA in strikeouts, strikeouts per nine innings, and hits allowed per nine. He set the Big Ten’s single-season strikeout record for conference games alone. When he pitches, opposing offenses don’t just struggle; they disappeared.

Edwards is a Golden Spikes Award semifinalist, a likely first-round pick, and the clearest Pitcher of the Year selection this conference has had in years.

Transfer of the Year: Will Gasparino, OF, UCLA

Will Gasparino spent two seasons at Texas being the guy who was almost there. The tools were obvious, he’s 6-foot-6, runs well, plays center field, and has raw power that gets your attention every time he takes a swing. But the results were incomplete.

The strikeout rate was too high. The batting average was inconsistent. Evaluators kept writing “needs to prove it” in their reports.

He transferred to UCLA this offseason, came home to Los Angeles where he grew up, and proved it immediately. In his first full month as a Bruin, he was one of the hottest hitters in the country. He led the nation in home runs early in the season.

His plate discipline, the very thing scouts questioned, improved dramatically. He stopped chasing pitches he couldn’t do damage with and started punishing the ones he could.

The numbers he put up this season at UCLA shattered anything he did in Austin. He wasn’t just a useful addition to an already loaded lineup. He was one of its best hitters.

Freshman of the Year: Angel Laya, OF, Oregon

Oregon freshman Angel Laya played his first college game in February and looked like he’d been doing this for three years. He opened the season with a .538 average, two home runs, and zero strikeouts across four games against George Mason.

Laya is a 6-foot-3 outfielder from Eastlake High School in San Diego with Venezuelan heritage, he wears number 53 in honor of Bobby Abreu, who wore the same number throughout a nearly 20-year big league career.

He’s had that kind of presence all season. By April, he had broken Oregon’s all-time freshman home run record, reaching 13 on his way to a season the Ducks’ program hadn’t seen from a first-year player before. He finished with a batting average just shy of .300, an OPS of .954.

Oregon needed its young core to carry weight this year, and Laya was its most consistent contributor from the first weekend on.

Coach of the Year: John Savage, UCLA

In the transfer portal era, the easiest move for any college baseball coach is to reload the roster with experienced players every offseason and worry about building something later. John Savage didn’t do that.

He stayed committed to recruiting high school players and developing them over time, even when it meant a couple of down years while those players grew into their roles.

In 2025, that patience paid off with a College World Series trip. In 2026, it produced the number one team in the country. The Bruins finished their regular season as the first Division I team to reach 40 wins, went 26-2 in conference play, and led the nation in run differential.

Their offense scored over nine runs a game. Their defense was elite. Their pitching staff, the one area Savage identified as a weakness after last year’s CWS run, was dramatically improved through a targeted mix of development and smart additions.

Seventeen winning seasons in 22 years at UCLA. A national championship. Four College World Series trips. And now, back-to-back Big Ten titles. Savage has been one of the best coaches in college baseball for a long time, and 2026 was a reminder of exactly why.

Big Ten All-Conference Team