AJ Welch is The Herald’s 2026 Baseball Player of the Year

Published 8:22 am Monday, June 15, 2026

With Monroe baseball just one game away from returning to the state tournament for the first time since 2023, there was no doubt who would take the bump.

Facing Stanwood in a District 1 Class 3A winner-to-state matchup at Everett Memorial Stadium on May 16, the Bearcats would lean on AJ Welch, as they had all season. Making up a lethal one-two punch with fellow senior Caleb Campbell, Welch would be trusted to steer Monroe back into state contention from the mound.

The Spartans proved to be a tough out. Braddock Johnson and Steven Doersam combined to allow just six hits and two walks through seven scoreless frames, stifling the Bearcats bats in a way that can kill seasons.

Luckily for Monroe, Welch met the moment.

With 12 strikeouts and five hits allowed in seven shutout innings, Welch set the table for Maddox Bingham to get out of a bases-loaded jam in the top of the eighth before Andre Tarasov’s walk-off RBI single sent the Bearcats to state with a 1-0 victory.

“It was kind of the same thing he did all year,” Monroe coach Connor Thompson said of Welch’s performance. “With how good he is, he knew that a lot of the times his success would mean team success. … His compete level has been that consistent pretty much every start he had. Every time that he started, I believed — and you could kind of see the team believed — that we were always going to have a chance to win.”

The No. 15 seed Bearcats’ road ultimately ended with a 5-4 loss to No. 2 seed Kennewick in the second round, but after slashing .397/.482/.575 with 17 RBI and 13 runs scored, and posting a 1.03 ERA with 84 strikeouts and 13 walks in 61 innings on the mound, Welch is The Herald’s 2026 Baseball Player of the Year.

“Coming into senior year, it was kind of like, ‘Okay, we get one last shot at this thing,’” Welch said. “And the group of guys that I’m surrounded by couldn’t be a better group, and I wouldn’t have wanted to do this with anybody else.”

Following a disappointing junior season in which Welch entered spring recovering from an elbow injury, and a young Monroe roster didn’t mesh in time for a state bid, the pitcher/infielder felt confident he would end his high school career on a high note.

On the first day of practice, Thompson’s first as head coach for the program, Welch looked him in the eye and told him the Bearcats would reach the state championship by the end of the year.

“I was just like, ‘Hey, I’m just worried about getting through this practice,’” Thompson recalled saying. “… I’ve learned to be very process-oriented, and just, ‘Hey, we’re going to be really good at one piece at a time,’ and to be quite frank, when he said that, everything that he did — whether it be practice, whether it’s a game, whether it’s on the bus, being light just keeping guys’ focus on line — he firmly believed that.”

In the end, Monroe did not get that far, but Welch’s efforts on the mound and at the plate served as the engine for a turnaround season. With an 8-2 league record, the Bearcats finished tied atop the Wesco North 3A/2A standings with Snohomish.

Monroe split the season series with the Panthers on March 20 and 23, and after splitting against Marysville Getchell and losing a non-league matchup against Jackson, the Bearcats stood on rocky ground early on.

However, following a road trip to Spokane, Monroe started to turn things around. Welch went 4-for-4 with two RBI as Campbell and Adam Manke pitched a combined no-hitter in an 8-0 win against Mead on April 7. The next day, Welch went 3-for-3 with another RBI in a 4-1 win against West Valley (Spokane).

Welch pointed to that trip as a significant turning point on and off the field. The team got in trouble for missing curfew at their hotel one of the nights in Spokane, but the players turned it into a unifying moment rather than something that could dismantle their season.

“As much as it sucked running and doing burpees or whatever our punishment is, it really did bring everybody closer together,” Welch said. “And if I could take that back, I still don’t think I would. That trip altogether, I think we came off a tough loss (against Jackson) right before, and that trip was just so much fun, and it was such a good bounce back. Almost like a refresh mid-season.”

From there, the Bearcats went 7-4 over the remainder of the regular season, including 6-0 in their league schedule with sweeps over Marysville Pilchuck, Everett and Stanwood. Welch highlighted the stretch with 15 strikeouts in a three-hit, complete-game shutout in Monroe’s 1-0 win against Everett on April 22.

Welch credits increased situational awareness, such as when to play small ball, and playing cleaner defense in the field as major growth points both individually and for the entire team. But as much as Welch took his game to another level in 2026, arguably his biggest leap was the one he took as a leader.

“He matured,” Thompson said. “He understood that he made mistakes, everybody else on the team makes mistakes, and it’s easy to have bad body language, right? It’s easy to kind of go quiet if things aren’t going your way, and that was the complete opposite this year.

“It didn’t matter what was going on. We could be up by 10, we could be down by five, and his mound presence, his body language in the batter’s box— Even in the dugout, he was never sitting down. He was never upset. He was always engaged, and being a great player, being a senior, everyone fed off that.”

It culminated in leading the Bearcats back to the state tournament for the first time since Welch’s freshman season. Even among all the highlights he could choose from in his 12-strikeout performance against Stanwood, Welch said his favorite part was watching his teammates finish the job in the eighth inning.

“That’s definitely my favorite moment in high school,” Welch said. “Seven-inning shutout, and we couldn’t scratch one across the whole game, and then (Bingham) comes in and gets out of a bases-loaded jam, and then we get the opportunity to walk it off, and we do. It was such an unbelievable high. We clinched state, and that was kind of the breakthrough moment.”

Despite out-hitting Kennewick 8-4 in the second round of the 3A State Tournament, with a fifth-inning rally tying the game 4-4, Monroe ultimately could not find another run after the Lions hit a go-ahead RBI double in the bottom of the fifth.

It marked a disappointing end to the season, but as Welch leaves the program, Thompson feels confident about the mark he left not just with his returning teammates, but the future generations of Bearcats as well.

Welch spent time this season helping out with the local select team, Legends Baseball, after practices in Monroe. Many of the 10U-13U players he coached will end up playing for the Bearcats when they reach high school.

“I guarantee all those kids look up to him, and I trust that he’s saying the right things to them and inspiring them to want to work hard, be better and hopefully have a state championship in their future,” Thompson said. “I know he does a lot of extracurricular stuff outside of that, and he’s a really integral member of the community, and I think that’s his biggest impact on our program, is his outreach.”

Welch will continue his baseball career at the University of Washington this fall. A lifelong Huskies fan, Welch committed last summer and is excited to get started at his dream school. He plans to spend this summer in the weight room preparing himself for fall ball.

As he takes the next step, Welch feels sad to leave his teammates, particularly Campbell, a Gonzaga commit who grew up playing baseball alongside Welch since they were five years old. Welch also wishes Monroe could have delivered on his first-day promise to reach the state championship.

However, after putting together an incredible two-way season and setting the Bearcats program back on course, he’s at peace.

“I think it ended a little bit prematurely,” Welch said. “I think we should have won a couple more games there at the end, and really made a good run at it, but I am happy with the way it ended. It was an unbelievably fun season, and it was the most fun of my entire career. … I wouldn’t have wanted to do it any other way, and with any other group of guys.”