As part of a recently-begun weekly look-in at the many independent baseball leagues across the country covered and streamed on its platforms, FloBaseball’s new Player of the Week series highlights the best of the best from indy ball over the week that was.

Ryan Grotjohn, an infielder for the High Point Rockers of the Atlantic League of Professional Baseball, takes this week’s honor.

Here’s a look at Grotjohn’s week, along with his background and a peek into his independent league season to date:

Career Look-Back

The Western Athletic Conference’s batting champion in 2017 with Cal State Bakersfield (.390 batting average), Grotjohn, who had four productive seasons with the Roadrunners before being selected in the 10th round by the Arizona Diamondbacks in the 2017 MLB Draft. 

He made it to as high as Double-A in Arizona’s minor-league system before eventually finding his way to independent ball after sitting out the COVID-impacted 2020 season. From that point, two seasons with the Kansas City Monarchs of the American Association of Professional Baseball—and a stint with the Kansas City Royals’ Double-A affiliate, the Northwest Arkansas Naturals, in 2022—eventually led to his current stop at High Point. 

With the Rockers, Grotjohn is well on pace to obtain a new single-season best for home runs, having tied his career high with 10 as of this writing, while he’s overall slashing .305/.415/.525 with acareer-bestt 14 stolen bases (while being caught just once) to boot. All season, the Arizona-native has been an integral part of the Rockers, helping them to win the ALPB’s South Division First Half title. 

Standout Performances

High Point scored double-digit runs in back-to-back games to start the week, and Grotjohn was one of the main drivers behind each of those offensive outbursts. In a wild 14-13 win Sunday against the Gastonia Honey Hunters in which the two teams combined for an eye-popping 32 hits, Grotjohn went 3 for 5 with a pair of runs and two RBIs, both of which came off base hits in the first and fifth innings. 

Two days later, in an 11-9 Rockers win against the Staten Island Ferry Hawks, Grotjohn instead showed off some of his newfound power. In that game, he went 2 for 3 with three runs and four RBIs, helping blast High Point to as much as a seven-run lead in the victory as he homered twice, first via a three-run shot in the third inning and next through a solo homer in the sixth. 

His hot streak cooled a bit in Wednesday’s rematch with the Ferry Hawks—a 5-1 Rockers loss—in which he went 0 for 4, but Grotjohn picked up right where he left off Thursday. High Point closed out its series with Staten Island in a strong way with a 9-3 win, helped by two more RBIs from Grotjohn, both of which came on a first-inning single that gave his team an early spark as part of a four-run opening frame.