(Photo Credit: Chris Bergmann)
The HCBL is full of elite five-tool players with hopes of elevating their baseball careers. The league is made for athletes who may not have been on a scout’s prospect list, but have a ceiling to make a name for themselves. Nobody has taken that opportunity and ran with it quite like Westhampton’s Tyler Becker.
“I think he is the best overall player in the Hamptons League,” Bill Ianniciello, coach of the North Fork Ospreys and Becker’s assistant coach at Adelphi University, said. “He is an all-around player. He hits for average, hits for power and his range defensively is really impressive.”
Becker hits at the top of the order and starts at shortstop for an Aviators team that has already clinched a playoff berth. He ranks third in the HCBL in RBIs and home runs and second in runs scored while hitting .298 for the season.
“This summer, I’ve really been trying to put together my swing,” Becker said. “I’ve been working on a couple different things and it’s been paying off quickly. It’s good because I’ve been helping the team win and now I just hope we win the HCBL championship.”
The Manorville-native played his high school ball at Eastport South Manor. In his varsity career, Becker earned all-county honors twice and was second team All-Long Island in his senior year. All his high school success drew the attention of Ianniciello, who played the main role in recruiting Becker to Adelphi University.
“The first thing I noticed was his swing,” Ianniciello said. “He has an advanced follow through, he hits to all fields with power and is just an outstanding kid with a big character.”
“I didn’t want to go too far from home,” Becker said. “Adelphi is a great distance and I loved everything about it. The baseball field is right in the middle of campus and there’s a whole atmosphere around the campus that is incredible.”
Year one at Adelphi created unfamiliar circumstances for Becker. He did not get much playing time, only seeing the plate 30 times in 20 total appearances for the Panthers. Head coach Dom Scala reassured Becker at the end of the season that he was recruited to play and he will get his opportunity the following spring. Without any self-doubt, Becker went right back to work when the season ended into the summer.
The South Florida Colligate League presented a chance for Becker to improve his game with other talented college prospect down south. It turned out to be one of the best things that could have happened to him as he received an abundance of instruction that allowed him to breakthrough.
“In Florida, I got to play every day which was a nice change of pace from freshman year,” Becker said. “The competition was good and I had a great experience. I was just working hard on my hitting and took all the advice I could get.”
Becker hit .265 last summer for the Delray Beach Lightning. The numbers don’t bounce off the page, but what followed that summer was what really got people talking.
He won the starting shortstop role and did not let his coaches regret it. Becker finished second on the squad with a .331 batting average and went on a 23-game hitting streak in April that lasted until the final game of the season. The Panthers finished with a 26-18-1 overall record with a 14-9 mark in conference play.
“I’ll never forget that summer,” Becker said. “Once I got back to Adelphi, I now knew that I could play with these guys and could help the team win in any way possible.”
“Tyler is a sponge,” Ianniciello said. “I can’t say there is one thing we tell him in particular that helps him. He takes everything the coaching staff says and displays it on the field.”
After an incredible sophomore year that put him on the map, Becker joined Charlie Barbieri’s Westhampton Aviators squad in the Hamptons League for the summer. Barbieri wasn’t sure what he would get out of the kid, but with almost an entire regular season in the books, it’s safe to say there’s no other player he’d rather have.
“He just had a presence about him,” Barbieri said. “He does more by example in a quiet manner, but he has that leadership trait. He has a confidence that you can’t hear, but you clearly see it and out guys follow it. You could tell that from the first day he met him.”
Barbieri credited Becker by saying he practically carried the Aviators’ offense in the beginning of the season, and the numbers back that up. He only recently fell out of the race for the league’s hitting crown, leads Westhampton in nearly every statistical category and hit second for the Blue All-Stars in the league’s annual all-star game.
While Becker’s stats prove he is an incredible hitter, Barbieri is more impressed with his fielding at shortstop. He has almost 50 more fielding assists than the second leading player on Westhampton with 106 and has made a plethora of highlight reel plays.
“His hitting numbers are obviously off the charts, but he his defense is unbelievable,” Becker said. “The kid makes every play, which really helps his teammates out. When the pitchers knows they have him behind them, the guys have more confidence to throw strikes.”
What Becker has displayed this spring and summer has really caught the attention of major league scouts. Before 2018, there weren’t many teams who even knew his name. But after he showed out with Adelphi and Westhampton, that has changed very quickly.
“Tyler has put himself on the radar this season with his ability to provide power at a premium position like shortstop,” said a National League scout. “In a wood bat conference that notoriously suppresses offense, he can stand out if he can continue to drive the baseball.”
With the playoffs approaching, Becker knows there is so much more he has to give so he can help the Aviators win their fourth HCBL title. But when the season concludes over the next couple of weeks, his focus shifts right back to the spring.
“You realize you want to go to school to have fun, and playing baseball at school has been the greatest experience I’ve ever had so far,” Becker said. “The team was good when I came two seasons ago and we’ve been getting better each year. The goal now is to compete for and win a conference championship.”
“He’s a guy that is the first on the field and the last to leave,” Barbieri said. “It’s something to really admire as a coach.”
Becker has surely been a player to admire all summer long. His performance continues to catch the eyes of more people each game, and now the eyes will be on him with the HCBL playoffs starting this week.
