Canadian slugger William Germaine has left the Stuttgart Reds and signed on with the Tübingen Hawks for the coming 2022 German Bundesliga season, bolstering a Hawks lineup that struggled last year to compete in the league’s southern division.
Germaine, the Bundesliga South’s 2020 Batter of the Year in a season in which he recorded a 1.743 OPS, played collegiately at Hill Junior College in Texas and NCAA Division 2’s Southern Arkansas (2015-16) before starting his professional career with the Southern Illinois Miners of the independent Frontier League in 2017.
The catcher, who can also play the corner infield positions, outfield, and has pitched some (he recorded a win and a loss for the Brock de Drummondville in Quebec’s top division (LBMQ) in 2021), made his name in Germany with the Laufer Wölfe (Wolves) of the second division in 2018. He hit eight home runs in just 90 at-bats and slugged 1.056 for the club located just east of Nuremberg.
Despite finishing at the top of the league, the Wolves decided not to pursue promotion to the first division and Germaine signed on with the IT sure Falcons Ulm for 2019. He showed that his success the previous season had not been a fluke, hitting 14 home runs for the Falcons. For his efforts, Baseball Jobs Overseas named Germaine its twelfth-best overseas batter of the 2019 season.
He has hit 28 home runs the past two summers with the Stuttgart Reds, including 16 alone in 2021, and now moves roughly 40 kilometers south to put on a blue Tübingen jersey.
The Hawks finished the 2021 regular season with a record of 7-21 and scored just 74 runs in the 24 games against the teams that finished above them in the standings. They were shutout on four occasions and managed just one run on three others.
Germaine, together with player-manager Joshua Wyant, will be expected to support a young Hawks team in 2022, with Germaine serving as hitting coach and assisting with the club’s youth work in addition to his playing duties.
The Hawks open the 2022 season at home against Regensburg on April 2nd.