by Vinny Messana, Editor
You won’t get much emotion from him. Not even when he pitches his heart out and delivers his team to the Gulf Coast League championship in his first full pro ball season.
It’s exciting,” he said mustering up some faux bravado. “It’s hard to believe last year I was pitching in high school games.”
Nick Fanti, just one year removed from graduating from Hauppauge HS and winning the coveted Carl Yastrzemski Award, fired 5.1 shutout innings of relief with six punch outs in a 3-2 victory over the GCL Cardinals.
With the victory, Fanti–who is just 19-years-old still–improves to 8-0 on the season with a 1.42 ERA. He pitched opposite of Mike O’Reilly, who was selected by St. Louis this year out of Flagler College in the 27th round. Like Fanti, Reilly is a Long Islander who won the Yaz Award in 2012 while playing at Shoreham-Wading River HS.
“I never knew of him,” said Fanti.”I know that he won the Yaz Award when I was a freshman. It’s sort of a funny coincidence that we’re both here. But he threw really well today. He worked out of a couple jams including one with the bases loaded and none out,” he added.
Reilly was taken out with two outs in the fifth inning and he was tagged with three ER on six hits and two walks while striking out six.
The Phillies trailed 2-0 entering the bottom of the fifth inning, but put up three runs which ultimately was the difference in the game.
This playoff match up is not short on Long Island connections.
In fact, Game 1 was saved by Jonathon Mulford (Massapequa ’12, Adelphi ’16) of the Cardinals. Mulford has been enjoying tremendous success in his first taste of pro ball as well. Over 19.2 IP, he has six saves with a 2.29 ERA and 0.92 WHIP.
It doesn’t end there.
Tomorrow’s starter for the Phillies will be Kyle Young (St. Dominic ’16) as they look to put the finishing touches up on a championship season.
The big LHP has impressed Fanti so far this season.
“He came in throwing three pitches for strikes. He’s already a starter for us. He’s been impressive.”
As previously noted, Fanti is not one to get overly jubilant. He did, however, note that he’s looking forward for tomorrow’s game.
“Every day we have a different job to do during the games and I might volunteer to be the bat boy just so I can be the first one on the dog pile if we win.”
