Ben Buerkle is an assistant baseball coach at Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota, a position he has held since the start of the 2018 season.
Buerkle—who graduated in May, 2017 with a 3.78 cumulative GPA as a double-major in Business Management and Finance—was a four-year standout for the Cardinals.
He concluded his Saint Mary’s career as the program’s all-time hits leader with 233, while also owning career records in doubles (51), triples (13), runs (162), RBIs (150), and games played (158). Just one of two players in program history with more than 200 career hits—and the only one with 50 or more hits in all four seasons—Buerkle’s .413 career batting average is second only to Tim Piechowski’s program-record .417 mark.
A three-time All-MIAC First-Team—not to mention the MIAC’s Rookie of the Year in 2014, Buerkle was selected to the American Baseball Coaches Association/Rawlings All-Midwest Region Team fourth straights year, while landing D3baseball.com All-Midwest Region honors in each of his last three seasons.
Buerkle was also named a CoSIDA Academic All-America® three times—twice earning Third-Team honors, while being selected the Academic All-America® Second-Team his senior season.
In his final year in a Cardinal uniform, Buerkle started all 39 games—all in center field—hitting a team-leading .405 (53-for-153). He also led or shared the team lead in runs (39), hits (53), doubles (13), total bases (92), slugging percentage (.702), walks (31)—including 18 in his last 14 games—and on-base percentage (.524). Defensively, Buerkle was nearly perfect from his position in center field, making just two errors in 112 chances (.982 fielding percentage), while collecting 105 putouts and adding five assists.
Buerkle, who opened each of his four collegiate seasons with hits in at least 10 consecutive games, recorded at least one hit in 30 of the Cardinals’ 39 games his senior season and closed out his career having collected at least one hit in 140 of the 158 games he played in—while reaching base safely in 153 of those 158 games.
