Alex Williams enters the grad transfer portal
On Thursday, Stanford senior right-handed pitcher Alex Williams entered the transfer portal as a graduate transfer. CardinalSportsReport.com has received confirmation. Williams was the Pac-12 Pitcher of the Year with an 8-4 overall record and a 3.20 ERA at season’s end. In the regular season, he was 8-1 and had an ERA below 2.00, so his post-season was really rough.
It wasn’t expected that Williams would be back next season. He’s graduated from Stanford with a degree in Management Science & Engineering and just the overall vibe was that he either was going to enter the MLB draft or do something else with his life, which would include possibly playing ball at another school.
Considering the way his post-season went, it might be good for Stanford that he’s moving on and not looking to come back. As great as his regular season was, Williams became the weak-link in their team come the post-season. He lost every game he started and really put them behind the eight-ball in each round. It eventually caught up with them in the College World Series.
That all said, Williams still deserves a lot of credit for the way he played in the regular season. Being Pac-12 Pitcher of the Year is a real honor and he played a major role in their regular season success. His post-season failures don’t take away from that.
At the end of the season, Williams received Stanford’s Tom Hansen Conference Medal along with swimmer Brooke Forde. Stanford put out the following release:
STANFORD, Calif. - Alex Williams (baseball) and Brooke Forde (women's swimming and diving) have been selected as Stanford's 2021-22 Pac-12 Tom Hansen Conference Medal recipients.A Conference Medal is awarded annually to each member institution's outstanding senior male and female student-athlete based on the exhibition of the greatest combination of performance and achievement in scholarship, athletics and leadership.
Conference medal winners have been named every year since the 1960-61 academic year. In 2009, the Pac 12 renamed the award the Tom Hansen Conference Medal in honor of Hansen, who retired at the end of June 2009 after serving for 26 years as Commissioner of the Pac-10.
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