We had some fun with a Twitter poll on Friday night asking our audience which high school team had the best pitching staff of the past decade. This was a follow up on a blog post from back in 2015 of the same title, but it included colleges in that post.
Which team had the best pitching staff of the past decade ? (Write-in for other)
— Axcess Baseball LI (@axcessbaseball) June 29, 2018
The teams mentioned were 2017 Kellenberg, 2013 Ward Melville, 2011 Chaminade and 2008 Pat-Med. Some people pointed out omissions such as 2008 Islip which included Eddie Macaluso, Rob Rogers and Chris Burke, a team that won NY Class A title and two of whom wound up pitching professionally so that is an error on my part. Also, if there was room for more I would certainly add 2012 Massapequa which featured Jonathon Mulford and Ryan McCormick who both pitched professionally as well as 2012 Holy Trinity which featured the Gatorade Player of the Year and MLB Draft pick Alex Robinson.
Now I wasn’t able to personally watch every staff and during my playing career which ended in 2012 I didn’t get to watch Chaminade at all, but I can speak on the other teams from experience. I can say that Pat-Med was as good as it gets. Any team that marches out Marcus Stroman every third game is a nightmare to face. I was a junior at Centereach HS that year and we scrimmaged twice. I actually was pitching and suffered a season-ending injury that day but that’s a story for a different day. I just remember their staff being so intimidating that they didn’t even throw any of them against us, but they did use them to pitch against their own team in that game to get their work in!
Same can be said about 2013 Ward Melville that included Anthony Kay, coming off a junior season in which he allowed exactly 0 runs in 55 innings of work. Both of those teams had strong supporting casts as well.
For the sake of this argument, though, we’ll discuss Kellenberg of last year. This was a team I got to see plenty of since Axcess Baseball had just begun. I was excited to see how the season would unfold being that Chris Cappas was already a known commodity and then you factor in Jason Diaz who had just committed to Miami and put his name on the map. To say they performed to expectation would be an understatement but the real story was the emergence of Andrew Williams, who flew under the radar to post an outstanding record of 6-1 with a 0.43 ERA over 43.2 IP. Cappas, who I watched two or three times during the season was even more untouchable as he compiled an ERA of 0.18 also with a record of 6-1. He was named CHSAA Player of the Year and went his final four outings without allowing a run. Diaz, the youngest of the group, was equal to the task as he went 5-1 with a 0.55 ERA and 53 strikeouts over 38.0 IP. He had the most gutsy performance of the year, shutting out St. John the Baptist in the Finals at Hofstra in front of over 1,000 people, striking out the final batter on a nasty slider in the dirt.
They didn’t allow much of anything all year and it was a fitting way for their season to end. They were the only team on Long Island to have their season end with a victory in a championship game, as Wantagh and Massapequa both lost in states. It would’ve been interesting to see them take on teams from other sections to see how long their run could’ve gone.
Cappas had generated some buzz from MLB teams and I thought he had a good chance when I heard he was flirting with 90 MPH the previous fall and comparisons to Nick Fanti were circulating but his velocity was mainly in the 84-86 MPH range throughout the year. Diaz was the most advanced sophomore to come out of Long Island since Joe Flynn 4 years earlier at Ward Melville. He was 90-91 MPH most of the season and making it look easy.
You can argue many different ways, that’s the beauty of sports and Long Island has been famous for its pitching over the years. But one irrefutable fact is that the 2017 Kellenberg Firebirds won the CHSAA championship thanks to a lights-out pitching rotation that won our vote.
NOTE** I understand that most of our audience is too young to remember any of the other teams which is most likely the biggest factor in the outcome of the vote.
