NEWPORT, R.I. – The Gulls are excited to bring in two West Virginia University Mountaineers to Newport for the 2018 season; RHP Kade Strowd and infielder Marques Inman will join this summer’s 33-man roster.

 

Strowd is from Fort Worth, TX, where he graduated from Mansfield Legacy High School. The sophomore stands at six-foot-two, 175, and throws from the right-side. Strowd has started seven games in which he has posted a 4.75 ERA through a team-high 36.0 innings. Additionally, the righty currently ranks second on his team with 29 strikeouts and has emerged as a weekend starter for Coach Randy Mazey.

 

As a freshman, Strowd made 17 appearances with eight starts. In 45.1 innings, the Mountaineer allowed 29 earned runs on 48 hits while striking out 35. He finished the season with a 5.76 ERA and was named to the 2017 Academic All-Big 12 Rookie Team.

 

In his time at Mansfield Legacy High, Strowd was named a 2016 Perfect Game Preseason All-American, a 2015 Underclass Honorable Mention All-American, and was named to the 2015 Perfect Game 17U WWVA All-Tournament Team. With a fastball touching 90 MPH as a senior in high school, Strowd was the No. 78th ranked right-handed pitcher and the No. 221 overall player in the state of Texas.

 

Also making the trip from Morgantown to Newport will be Marques Inman. The six-foot-one, 215-pound infielder grew up in Elyria, OH, and graduated from Elyria High School. Inman is currently a redshirt sophomore after he missed the majority of his sophomore campaign with a leg injury. Before the injury, Inman had led the Mountaineers with a .351 batting average and a .544 slugging percentage. In just 16 games, Inman recorded five multi-hit games giving him a total of 20 hits, eight RBI, three doubles, one triple, and two home runs.

 

Inman’s 2018 has started right where 2017 left off as he has started 25 of the team’s 30 total games played. He currently holds onto a .277 batting average, which includes 23 hits. 13 of the 23 have been for extra-base hits (nine doubles & four home runs) and his 19 RBI leads the team. 

 

As a junior in high school, Inman hit .443 with 22 runs, 13 doubles, three home runs and 32 RBI. He was named a Perfect Game Underclass High Honorable Mention All-American, an All-Northern Ohio Conference First Team performer, and was named All-Lorain County First Team. In a 2016 interview, Elyria Baseball’s head coach Ed Piazza told The Morning Journal that “Marques was the type of player that nobody was going to outwork him. If he had a weakness, he worked on it in the offseason and got better every year.”

 

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The Newport Gulls, members of the 13-team New England Collegiate Baseball League (NECBL), are a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, founded as the Rhode Island Gulls in 1998 in Cranston, R.I., before moving to Newport in 2001. In addition to recruiting, fielding, and developing a team of the nation’s top collegiate baseball athletes and attracting 50,000 fans annually to Cardines Field, the predominantly volunteer organization strives to benefit the community of Newport County via summer camps, reading programs, fundraisers, scholarships, and charitable donations – totaling over $1 million since 2001. The Gulls are six-time champions of the NECBL – the winningest franchise in league history – and were ranked as the overall No. 1 summer collegiate baseball team in the country by Perfect Game USA in 2012.

 

For more information about the Newport Gulls, visit facebook.com/newportgulls, follow the Gulls on Twitter @NewportGulls or visit www.newportgulls.com.