The Topps card company along with minor league baseball annually awards a “Player of the Year” award to a player in each of the various minor leagues with its annual George M. Trautman award. This year the winner for the Appalachian League was Minnesota Twins prospect Max Kepler of the Elizabethton E-Twins. This past season the 19 year-old Kepler hit .297 with 10 home runs and had a team leading 49 RBI’s while helping his team win the league championship.
The Phillies, Pirates and Blue Jays each had players chosen in two of the 16 domestic Minor Leagues. Thirteen Major League organizations are represented in all. You can see the entire list of winners at http://www.milb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20121105&content_id=40175438&vkey=pr_l120&fext=.jsp&sid=l120 . I along with a lot of other fans are looking forward to seeing Max play in Cedar Rapids this coming season.