aXcess Baseball is proud to announce that as of January 16, 12-year MLB veteran and former All-Star pitcher, Neal Heaton will be the Pitching Analyst for the 2017 season. In this role, the Long Island native will be providing a constant stream of how-to articles, individual rankings and pitching-drill videos for our Exclusive aXcess members.
“I’m excited to be a part of this growing platform for baseball news,” said Heaton. “My goal is to lend my knowledge from playing Major League Baseball to the young arms across Long Island and to help them discover their full potential.”
Neal is a 1978 graduate of Sachem HS, where he won the coveted Carl Yastrzemski Award playing under Head Coach Bill Batewell. He was selected by the New York Mets in the first round of the January 1979 draft, but chose to attend the University of Miami. He went on to have an illustrious career, setting the program record for wins in a season (18), victories in a career (42), most strikeouts in a game (23), most strikeouts in a season (172) and most strikeouts in a career (381)–despite only pitching for three seasons. He was elected to their Hall of Fame in 1993 and had his No. 26 jersey retired.
Heaton was then drafted by the Cleveland Indians in the second round of the 1981 draft. He went on to pitch for 12 seasons, compile 80 wins and was named to the National League’s All-Star team in 1990 while a member of the Pittsburgh Pirates.
We are excited to have such a distinguished member of the Long Island baseball community become part of the team, as we seek to continue to raise the bar for providing our audience with coverage of the Long Island baseball scene. Having given pitching lessons to young athletes of all ages for the better part of a decade, Heaton is the most influential and qualified person to fill this role.
