High school baseball: News' MVPs have winning down pat

The value of a player can be based on a couple of factors.

What type of numbers does a player put up? How do his teammates react to him? What are the intangible factors like leadership or attitude?

But the most important thing is, does he help the team win?

The Deseret News Most Valuable Players all had the winning factor down. Rhett Nelson of Timpanogos, Ryan Thomas of Cottonwood, A.J. Carman from Judge Memorial and Kevin Nay of Gunnison all helped lead their teams to state championships and thus proved to be the MVPs of their respective classifications.

5A: There was a week late in Timpanogos' Region 4 schedule in which the Timberwolves looked far from a state-title caliber team.

Following a two-game sweep at the hands of American Fork, the T-Wolves were suddenly tied for third and found themselves in serious jeopardy of being caught for the league's final playoff berth. And next on the schedule was a road game with the highly-ranked Spanish Fork Dons.

But in a game Timpanogos needed to win more than any other this far in its season, junior Rhett Nelson had a monster day. In fact, it was a performance that seemed to calm any panic the T-Wolves had and had them playing with confidence and ease from that point on all the way to the state 5A championship. Nelson not only shut out the Dons with his right arm, but he went 4-for-4 at the plate with a home run and four RBIs.

"Honestly, I think he kind of took on this it's-up-to-me attitude," Timpanogos coach Kim Nelson said. "It was truly an amazing performance on his part, and winning that game just seemed to make everyone on the team feel that we were going to be OK."

Even with that clutch game at Spanish Fork, the T-Wolves still wouldn't have gone on to win the 5A title had Rhett Nelson not continued to deliver on the mound and at the plate. He was the winning pitcher in three of Timpanogos' five playoff wins, allowing a total of only 13 hits in those three games. Nelson also raised his batting average more than 100 points over the final two weeks of the season.

"Certainly, I don't think there was anyone more valuable to us over the final few weeks," coach Nelson said.

Most fellow 5A coaches felt the same way, which is why Rhett Nelson is the 2008 Deseret News 5A baseball MVP. For the season, he finished with a 10-0 record and an ERA of 2.03 with 76 strikeouts. He also batted .369 with 19 RBIs.