Poll results: Here’s the high school baseball player of the week in southwest Illinois

Owen Kelly of Belleville East High School is the winner of this week’s Belleville News-Democrat Baseball Player of the Week high school poll, as selected by readers of bnd.com.

In recent action, Kelly, a junior pitcher/outfielder, threw a no-hitter against Southwestern Conference rival Alton. In the 10-0 win, Kelly worked 6 innings, struck out 7 and walked 2.

Kelly followed that performance by throwing 4 2/3 shutout innings against SWC foe O’Fallon, allowing just 2 hits and 1 unearned run while striking out 10 and earning the win. Entering play this weekend, Kelly boasted a 4-0 record and 0.55 earned run average while fanning 39 batters in 25 innings. He also was hitting .375 on the season.

Kelly tallied 53% of the votes to finish ahead of Logan Mueller of Columbia High School, who secured 38% of the votes. Other BND nominees included Brendan Brock of Mascoutah High School, Evan Davis of Waterloo High School, Hank Gomric of Althoff Catholic High School, Will Mallard of O’Fallon High School and Spencer Stearns of Edwardsville High School. The poll ended at 11:59 p.m. Thursday.

To be clear, this poll is not scientific. In fact, we invite you to vote as many times as you want. It’s all for fun, BND readers.

Anyone can nominate a varsity high school softball or baseball player for an upcoming poll by emailing gvartanian@bnd.com. The next poll will appear on the BND’s website — www.bnd.com — at 5 a.m. Tuesday. Next week’s poll will be a vote for the boys prep team of the year.

Previous baseball poll winners: Alex Wright of Granite City High School (Week 1).