You can typically look at a team’s JV record and get an idea of how the varsity team will fare the next season. If that’s the case, Smithtown East could be in store for a special season in 2017.
Their JV team compiled a 17-1 record last year, and Head Coach Ken Klee will have no shortage of arms to throw out this year.
“This is by far the most pitching depth we’ve ever had,” he said. “The sophomores alone may have seven Div-I players,” he added. Many of those are pitchers. Doug Goodwin (4-1, All-League as a freshman on varsity last year), Nick Harvey, Michael Storms and William Kennedy are four high-end arms from the sophomore class alone. They all played for Gregg Sarra’s vaunted HDMH team.
And then there’s the upperclassmen.
Leading the staff will be Wagner-commit Mike Ruggiero, who won five games and was named All-County. He will be joined by John Goohs (three wins), Brian Leone (three wins) and Tyler Schmid (one win), who all logged significant innings last year. Whereas last year they were forced to replace all of the previous year’s pitching staff, they will be returning their entire staff this year. They will be counting on senior Matt Sarienero to get some big high-leverage outs. He was a reliable arm for them last season.
“The pitch count rule will not hurt us at all–it may actually work in our favor,” said Klee.
With that pitching staff, catcher Matty Tempone will have an important role in terms of game-calling and patrolling the running game.
Offensively, they won’t be forced to score many runs but he did note that they will make a lot of contact and run the bases well.
If there is any nitpicking, it’s that they did graduate Nick Rizzo (Mount Saint Mary’s), John Marti (Lafayette) and Shawn Kelly (Cortland). All three of those players were pivotal contributors to last year’s playoff team that went 19-5 and lost 3-2 in the Suffolk Class AA finals against West Islip.
Marti hit an absurd .541 last year and Kelly was a four-year varsity player that owns the program’s record for hits.
“You can’t replace Shawn Kelly,” said Klee. “But we will try to find someone that can replace some of the things he did.”
They will be counting on Andrew Cannino and John Cawley to provide punch in the middle-of-the-order.
Klee’s squad has been knocking on the door for the past two seasons. They also lost the previous season against Connetquot in the semi-finals, who went on to win the Long Island Championship. Last year they had Marti at the plate with the tying run on second base, and he lined a single to left field which looked like it could tie the game.
“It was a tough way to end the season with the tying run getting thrown out at the plate to end the game
Jimmy Mattera guns down Wes Marshall at the plate to send West Islip into the Suffolk County Class AA Final pic.twitter.com/XfinoiLVvL
— aXcess Baseball (@axcessbaseball) May 25, 2016
If he had to pinpoint what the team needs to improve on it would be the defense.
“We didn’t play the defense when we needed to. We had some defensive breakdowns that we had avoided all season,” he said. Even with that, they still have won 39 games in the past two years.
With the pitching depth, he expects to be right back there again.
“We will be extremely dangerous at the end of the year.”
