Former Shepherd University outfielder Brenton Doyle is off to just the kind of start to his professional baseball career that a player new to the play-for-pay ranks would like. Courtesy photo

SHEPHERDSTOWN — With 10 hits in his first 28 official at-bats, former Shepherd outfielder Brenton Doyle is off to just the kind of start to his professional baseball career that a player new to the play-for-pay ranks would like.

Doyle, who turned 21 in mid-May, was the 4th-round draft selection of the Colorado Rockies in this month’s Major League Baseball draft. He signed his professional contract just prior to the beginning of the Rookie Pioneer League season that opened on June 14.

The Rockies sent Doyle to Grand Junction, Colorado for his first taste of professional baseball. In his first week of games (Sunday, June 16 through Sunday, June 23) Doyle started and played in all seven Grand Junction games.

Through seven games of the short-season campaign, Doyle had already scored nine runs, had two home runs, one double, one triple and eight RBIs.

He had stolen three bases in three attempts and had drawn five walks. Doyle’s strikeout total was a little high with nine.

Doyle played three seasons with Shepherd, finishing the 2019 season with a .392 batting average and several national honors from the

NCAA Division II organization and Shepherd’s own Mountain East Conference.

Grand Junction is in the eight-team Pioneer League, which has teams from Colorado, Montana, Utah and Idaho. The league’s season runs from June 14 to Labor Day in early September and then stages a short series of playoff games among the teams having the best season records.

Doyle had one more year of eligibility at Shepherd, but as a player with three years of college play or being 21 years old, he was eligible for the Major League Baseball draft of amateur players.