The Northwestern Lehigh baseball team couldn’t have asked much more of Ben Boyer this season.

He did everything the Tigers’ coaching staff asked of him, and sometimes a bit more.

The senior pitcher/infielder was the team’s best hitter, as well as the anchor of its pitching staff, leading the team in most statistical categories.

“Ben was great for us all year,” said first-year head coach Chad Cooperman. “He’s a tremendous asset. Anytime he took the mound, he gave us a chance to win. Anytime he came up with runners in scoring position, it seemed like he drove them in. He’s the kind of player a coach dreams of.”

Boyer, who is this year’s Times News/Lehigh Valley Health Network Baseball Player of the Year, batted an even .500 in 2022, a team-high. The clean-up hitter also led the team with 37 RBIs and 42 hits, and scored 14 runs. Boyer walked nine times and had an OBP of .531. He struck out just once all season in 96 plate appearances, and that came in the Tigers’ final game of the season, a district playoff loss to Pine Grove.

“I feel like I did pretty well,” Boyer said. “I had a good amount of RBIs, and that shows that the guys in front of me were getting on base.”

Boyer’s most outstanding game at the plate came in the Colonial League quarterfinals when he went 5-for-5 against Palisades and drove in eight runs to lead his team to an 11-8 win. He also pitched the first few innings of that contest.

“That was probably my best game, hitting-wise,” Boyer said. “Coming into at-bats late in the game, I was feeling pretty confident. It didn’t feel like they couldn’t throw anything by me. I just waited for something to hit.”

On the mound, Boyer wasn’t just the Tigers’ ace, he was their go-to pitcher who got the ball just about any time he was available based on pitch limits. Boyer threw 62.1 innings, and went 8-2 with 10 starts.

Boyer threw as many innings as the Tigers’ next three pitchers combined, and nearly three times as many innings as anyone on the team. He would have been happy to throw even more innings if the rules allowed him to. Many games when Boyer got up over 80 pitches, he would focus on being efficient in an effort to get through innings on the fewest number of pitches.

“I just love to pitch,” he said. “I wish there wasn’t a 100-pitch limit. I wanted to pitch as much as I could. If I did start, usually I’d get to 100 pitches before the end of the game.”

“To have that mentality,” said Cooperman, “is one of the reasons he had the ball so much, and he had so much success. There were times his pitch count got up there, and he was getting stronger and stronger throughout the game.”

Boyer - whose fastball clocks in at around 82 miles per hour - allowed 63 hits and gave up 19 earned runs while striking out 62 batters this season, which comes out to about one per inning. He posted a 2.10 ERA and a 1.1 WHIP.

He relies mostly on his sinker and curve ball, but also throws a 2-seam and 4-seam fastball, a change up and a submarine curve.

Boyer and the Tigers started the 2022 season with losses in four of their first five games, and six of their first eight. They were 5-7, before winning their final eight regular season games to finish 13-7 and earn league and district playoff berths.

“It was a little rough in the start, but we starting hitting the ball better,” Boyer said.

Boyer started playing baseball with tee ball and has been playing spring, summer and fall for nearly that long. He gave up basketball after his freshman season and has been playing on the Avengers tournament teams for several years, traveling around the northeast and mid-Atlantic regions. He plays mostly first and second base for that team.

Boyer, whose father Eran played baseball at Northwestern in the early 1990s, was a varsity starter for the past three years at Northwestern, although his sophomore season was limited to a summer tournament for high school teams after the spring season was canceled.

As a junior, Boyer was the third starting pitcher on Northwestern’s staff, and started in the infield when not pitching. He helped the Tigers to a league title that season. This season, he played third base when not on the mound.

Boyer came into the season as the most experienced varsity player on a young roster that had more freshman (four) and sophomores (seven) than juniors (three) and seniors (five).

“Ben really took on a leadership task for us because we had a lot of young guys this season,” said Cooperman. “He shows up to practice early and puts in good, hard work. He leads by example. He goes out and takes care of business, and that inspires the other guys. He has a quiet confidence, and you need that in baseball.”