As sports fans we are usually victim to ‘recency bias’ in which we favor players that have excelled recently while our mind suppresses the memories of yesteryear.
In the case of current Major League Anthony Kay, he’s been on the front of enough baseball fans minds to never forget the greatness that was his high school career.
In 2012, while pitching for Ward Melville, he compiled what will undoubtedly go down as one of the most remarkable seasons in Long Island history. The hard-throwing southpaw went 53 innings, struck out 87 batters and allowed 0 ER. That’s right, even in the ultra-competitive League I and Class AA playoffs, he was completely untouchable. And it’s not like he was skating by and stranding runners on base. He allowed 17 hits and exactly 1 XBH. In fact, we should probably go back in time and give whoever hit that double an All-Long Island award just due to the level of difficulty.
For his amazing accomplishment, he was the recipient of the Paul Gibson Award. And that was only his junior season.
He followed that up by leading Ward Melville to their first Long Island Championship in 2013 and then was drafted by the New York Mets in the 29th round of the MLB Draft. He opted to attend UCONN and he had an outstanding three-year career and was drafted once again by the Mets, but this time it was in the first round (31st overall) of the 2016 MLB Draft.
Since that time, he was traded to the Toronto Blue Jays in the deal that sent Pat-Med grad Marcus Stroman to New York. The 24-year-old wound up pitching in the big leagues in September, compiling 14.0 IP and allowing 9 ER (5.79 ERA) with 13 K.
Kay defeated Jack Piekos (Bayport-Blue Point 2014), who put up other-worldly number during both his junior and senior seasons in leading the Phantoms to back-to-back New York State Championships including an undefeated 27-0 season during the former. He went 11-0 with a 0.38 ERA and 111 K over 73 IP. He fired a no-hitter and a 1-hitter during the playoffs. He certainly could’ve won this title but of course it’s hard to beat a 0.00 ERA against large-school competition.
A few other notable players that made it deep were the following:
Chris Cappas (Kellenberg 2017) : 6-1 record, 0.18 ERA, 39 IP, 1 ER, 53 K
Alex Robinson (Holy Trinity 2012) : 7-0 record, 0.58 ERA, 48 IP, 12 H, 96 K, 1 XBH
Chris Pike (Southampton 2010) : 10-0 record, 0.39 ERA, 68 IP, 18 H, 136 K
Brian Morrell (Shoreham-Wading River 2017): 10-1 record, 1.23 ERA, 67 IP, 93 K, 3 no-hitters
