Since we just crowned our 2026 Eagle-Tribune Baseball Player of the Year, North Andover’s Trey Martin, it seems like the right time to look back at the history of that award in our region.
Walsh became the second straight Knight to take the honor, following Dylan Lawrence in 2025. Lawrence helped lead Bentley University to the NCAA Tournament this spring, as did 2023 honoree Matt Pappalardo of Methuen for Endicott College.
A few of our recent MVPs are making major noise. Jackson Marshall, who took home the honor in baseball and basketball as a senior at Pinkerton in 2024, was named Big East Player of the Year this spring on the diamond for UConn. The Major League draft looks like it’s in his future.
This area hasn’t produced too many first round draft picks in any professional sport. One of them is two-time (2021-22) Eagle-Tribune MVP Liam Doyle of Pinkerton, who was selected with the fifth overall pick in the 2025 MLB draft after college stops at Coastal Carolina University, University of Mississippi and University of Tennessee. He’s now in double-A in the St. Louis Cardinals system.
And then there’s 2018 MVP Dom Keegan of Central Catholic and Methuen, who continues to knock on the door of a big league call-up in triple-A for the Tampa Bay Rays.
Haverhill High’s Carlos Pena (HHS ‘95) played 14 years in the majors and Andover High’s Ryan Hanigan (AHS ‘99) was behind the dish for 11 seasons in the bigs. But they were never Eagle-Tribune MVPs. Their last two years of high school they were edged out by Pinkerton’s Jay Yennaco (1994-95), Pelham’s Doug Johnson (‘99) and Masconomet’s Ben Crockett (‘98).
North Andover High’s Mike Weisman was our Player of the Decade for the 2010s, and five-tool Scarlet Knight Brandon Walsh was right in that Player of the Decade debate.
Lawrence’s Michael Calzetta earned top honors in 2009 and 2010 and then did the city proud at UMass Lowell.
Sean Hayden (‘08) and Nick Comei (‘13) are two Haverhill greats who earned MVP honors. Salem was winning state titles and churning out blue-chippers in the mid-2000s with Terry Doyle and Jeff Castillo leading the way.
Andover produced the first four MVPs we ever had: Chris Eggert, David Blank, Jim Hanning and Justin Hesenius.
Blank and Hanning were a vaunted 1-2 punch for those state championship teams under coach Dave Bettencourt, but don’t overlook Hesenius’ impact as a brilliant No. 3 pitcher and a feared slugger.
In 1997, Brian Tisbert continued the Golden Warrior MVP tradition. The first Central MVP was Bryan Welch, one of several area greats who then starred for Division 2 power Rollins (Fla.) College.