GUILFORD'S COWARD PROMOTED TO HUDSON VALLEY
Greensboro, NC (08/02/00) -- Former Guilford College baseball standout Chad Coward '00 (Siler City, NC/Jordan-Matthews) was promoted by Major League Baseball's Tampa Bay Devil Rays to the Hudson Valley Renegades of the New York-Penn League, the Renegades announced August 2. Coward started his professional career in June with the Princeton Devil Rays of the Appalachian League, a rookie circuit.
Coward, Tampa Bay's 14th-round pick in the June 2000 draft, had a 2-1 record with a 2.08 earned run average (ERA) in six starts for league-leading Princeton. He paced the Appalachian League with 41 strikeouts in 30.1 innings and ranked fifth among the loop's ERA leaders. Coward enjoyed his best professional outing last Saturday in Princeton's 3-2 win over Pulaski. He struck out a personal-best nine batters and scattered four hits, two unearned runs and a walk over a career-high six innings. He did not figure in the decision.
Coward is expected to replace Seth McClung in the Renegades' starting rotation and make his Hudson Valley debut Friday or Saturday against the Oneonta Tigers. The Renegades are a short-season A level team and sit the New York-Penn League cellar with an 11-29 record. The Renegades won the 1999 New York-Penn League title and are located in Wappingers Falls, NY, the hometown of Guilford baseball coach Gene Baker.
Guilford's first major-league draft pick since Arizona Diamondbacks' shortstop Tony Womack '92 (7th round, Pittsburgh, 1991), Coward graduated in May after compiling a 23-20 record with a 3.70 ERA and 319 strikeouts. He enjoyed his best season as a senior, when he went 9-3 with a career-low 1.73 ERA, which ranked 14th among NCAA Division III leaders. He earned second team Rawlings/American Baseball Coaches Association (ABCA) All-South honors and first team All-Old Dominion Athletic Conference (ODAC) recognition as a senior. Coward tossed Guilford's first no-hitter since 1972 in a March 18, 2000, win over Eastern Mennonite.
