by Zevan Shuster
The nature of high school baseball means roster turnover each year. The goal is to capitalize on strong senior classes.
Valley Stream North High School Baseball Coach Phil Sanfilippo faces a unique challenge as the 2020 season approaches, Sanfilippo knows that the roster turnover from last year to this year – and the resulting inexperience of his roster – will be something that he hasn’t had to deal with since his coaching tenure began.
“We graduated pretty much every starting pitcher that we had and every single starter on the field. They all graduated. Now, in many cases, we don’t always play all of the seniors. We play our best players and lots of times you’ll have a couple seniors on the field ,and guys from other grades, but it just so happened last year that every single guy in every single spot happened to be a senior,” head coach Phil Sanfilippo said.
For this year’s team, most spots on the field have yet to be claimed. Most competitions for playing time are just starting to heat up. Heading into the season, coach Sanfilippo is keenly aware that his roster has barely begun to take shape.
“When we finalize the roster sometime in March, we are going to have somewhere in the neighborhood of two to four seniors on this entire team,” said Sanfilippo. “So not only did we graduate all those seniors last year, we don’t have too many seniors this upcoming year.”
Among known quantities on his roster, Sanfilippo could think of three.
“The roster is far from finalized yet… my roster is less than finalized than even most of the coaches out there. There’s only three guys I could possibly mention to you. One would be Tim McGrath. He’s a player who did make an impact for us. He was mostly an outfielder for us last year, but we’re going to have to put him in the middle of the infield this year, which he is capable of doing,” said Sanfilippo.
McGrath is expected to play multiple positions, has good pop off the bat, and his excellent leadership skills earned him a spot as the team captain. According to his head coach, he isn’t only talented on the field, but he’s “a high character guy” off of it as well.
“He just went to the outfield last year because of need. He was a contributor on last year’s team, he did have some big hits down the stretch, did have some big time defensive plays, he’s a bit of a gamer, and he’s a guy we can count on,” said Sanfilippo.
Elsewhere, junior Luke Sibblies, who will both pitch and play shortstop, is also capable of making a huge impact.
“He’s a high level athlete,” said coach Sanfilippo. “He didn’t play a lot last year, but he did get about one start a week, which is a decent amount. He’s projected to be a starting pitcher; he was a reliever last year, and he’s more than capable of being an effective starting pitcher.”
Another arm that Sanfilippo is going to rely on is fellow right hander Jack Lang, who not only has high upside, but also gained valuable experience on last year’s team.
“The third guy I would mention is Jack Lang. He was pretty much our go to reliever last year. He closed out a couple games, he’s going to be a junior this year, he’s definitely grown, he’s been working out a lot, and I’ve already noticed a huge, huge improvement on him during the winter clinics, so I really think that he’s gonna be a big time contributor for us on the mound,” remarked an optimistic Sanfilippo. “He’s a starting pitcher. He’s a guy we’re looking for to lead the way on the mound for us.”
These three players are the only ones who made any impact at all on last year’s team, so the rest of the roster, and who plays and who doesn’t, along with who plays where, is still to be determined.
“I would say the theme is, we graduated an enormous amount of players, but with that being said, we have some baseball players in the program that I feel very good about. We have a lot of very hard working guys, and a lot of hungry guys,” said the head coach.
Sanfillipo continued, saying “I tell the players every season in the very beginning of the season that we absolutely do not make the lineup based on grades, and every single job on the field is wide open every season. It doesn’t matter who started last year. It doesn’t matter what anyone did on their summer team. Every single job is wide open, and that will never more so be the case than it’s going to be this upcoming year, with so many guys having graduated, and all those jobs open,” said Sanfilippo. “I expect a lot of interesting competitions, at literally every single spot on the field.”
Despite the team practically being full of unknowns, coach Sanfilippo knows there’s one thing he can count on when all else fails, or even if he’s unsure and just looking for another voice in his ear.
Assistant coach James Casella is coach Sanfillipo’s right hand man, and the head coach was effusive in his praise for his lead assistant.
“He offers a wealth of information. He’s a very valuable brain to have along with me in the dugout. If I ever have any indecision at all, all I gotta do is check with him and he always comes up with a really good idea of what to do,” said Sanfilippo.
Despite the unknowns being unprecedented is his tenure, coach Sanfilippo is no less optimistic heading into the season.
“The division again looks to be very strong, and we’re going to have a lot of very tough games on the schedule, but by no means are we looking to go into the season not expecting to make things happen. We have a lot of capable baseball players, that although inexperienced, we’re hoping they can mature in a hurry, because they do have ability, and they are hard working guys with great work ethics,” said Sanfilippo.
“So I’m really looking forward to the season. There’s definitely going to be a lot of teaching going on, but I do think we’re going to have some big time wins ahead of us.”
Only time will tell.
