Chris Peralta (Valley Stream South) taking BP. He batted .308 over 38 at bats last season. pic.twitter.com/2NDChY2Qcb
— Axcess Baseball LI (@axcessbaseball) October 23, 2020
You’d be hard-pressed to find a team that was better-suited to handle the shortened 2020 season than Molloy College. They return eight of their nine regulars that combined to hit .338 with a .908 OPS and all of their starting pitchers.
Hitting .338 as an individual will get you a batting title. Hitting .338 as a team will get you to a regional. The Lions are poised to make a playoff run this year with a loaded roster that will be tough for any team to contain.
Head Coach Joe Fucarino, entering his 16th year at the helm with 350 wins, will be looking to regain the magic of 2018 in which they won a program-best 31 games. They suffered through an injury-plagued season in 2019 but were off to a great start in 2020 with a 7-4 record before the pandemic shut down the season.
They will enter the season with 43 players on the roster, since they had all but three of last year’s seniors return. They have 13 new players – and it is quite a strong class. For a Long Island Division-II program, it’s as strong of a class as you’ll see.
“We have basically our whole team back,” said Fucarino. “And then we added. We have a very solid incoming crop of freshman,” he added.
Where to start?
As far as the returners go, they have seven regulars that hit over .300 in the abbreviated season. They are Sean Hogan (.452 AVG, 1.115 OPS), Peter Theodorellis (.429 AVG, 1.020 OPS), Matt Overton (.395 AVG, 1.145 OPS), James Messina (.370 AVG, 1.018 OPS), Jake McCarthy (.362 AVG, .944 OPS), Thomas Brady (.344 AVG, .844 OPS) and Chris Peralta (.308 AVG, .803 OPS). Then they added David Franchi from New York Tech. Overall, they finished 12th in team batting average in the nation. They also averaged 9 runs per game. Even if they don’t keep up that pace, it’s pretty clear that their offense will be reliable and their returning experience will be a positive.
“Offensively, we’ve been very impressive. I love our defense and we have good team speed,” he added. They stole 31 bases in 34 attempts – a 91 percent success rate.
During team workouts, they did live at bats. Coach Johnny Galanoudis was keeping track of their “quality at bats” which is an at bat that spans at least 7 pitches or results in hard contact. The batters were able to accomplish this with remarkable consistency.
During intersquad, this does come at the expense of the pitching staff, but pitching coach Alex Brosnan – a former All-American pitcher at Nassau CC and All-Long Island pitcher at Molloy – is not worried about his staff. They are returning all three of their weekend starters (Tim Panetta, Joe Minucci and Billy Wildeman). They certainly do not lack in experience. Panetta, a sixth year senior out of Christ the King HS, has pitched to a career 4.08 ERA over 158.2 IP with 149 strikeouts. He was the preseason ECC Pitcher of the Year and although his 2020 was not off to a great start, you can bet that the numbers would’ve regressed to the mean and he is a strong candidate to bounce back.
Minucci is a graduate student that helped East Meadow win the Nassau Class AA Title in 2016 before Massapequa began their reign of terror. In 2018, he was named Axcess All-Long Island when he went 3-0 with a 1.19 ERA over 30 IP for Nassau CC. He transferred to Molloy for 2019 where he has yet to duplicate that success but has provided innings for the Lions. He has started 12 games and averaged close to a strikeout per inning.
Rounding out the rotation, Wildeman is a senior out of Plainedge HS. He had earned a reputation for being a big-game pitcher since shutting out Wantagh in 2017. He was off to a 2-0 start in 2020 over 12 innings with 10 strikeouts. Brosnan stated that those three starters are all working in the 90-92 MPH range. If they need a fourth starter it will likely be Mineola native Christopher Wiercinski, who was 2-0 through 15 innings of relief with 12 strikeouts.
A.J. Verga, a sophomore out of William Floyd HS who was named Preseason All-Long Island in 2019, pitched on Friday. He was 84-86 MPH from the left side. The southpaw has big-game acumen so he could be a reliable arm out of the bullpen and potentially be a starter in the future.
The freshman crop of arms is outstanding. They brought in freshman Ryan Hynes from Ward Melville. We named him second-team All-Long Island for 2020. He has the stuff and the guile to be a starter down the road as well. They also brought in Ziv Gar (Plainview) and Timmy Mott (Holy Trinity). Both were named Preseason All-Long Island and Mott was our pick for CHSAA Pitcher of the Year. Gar pitched the epic playoff game that wound up going two days against Port Washington in 2018. Mott defeated St. Dominic in the playoffs in 2019. I wouldn’t be surprised if either of them wind up logging big innings.
As far as other relievers, they have redshirt-sophomore Charlie Cucchiara (East Meadow 2019) who allowed just one run through six innings last year and was untouchable in high school. Theodorellis had the lowest ERA on the team at 1.35 over 6.2 IP. Theodorellis is the rare two-way collegiate player. He was able to do it at Farleigh-Dickinson so they are confident he can do so at the Division-II level. Robert Lucano (Garden City 2018) was outstanding in high school and attended Hofstra as a freshman before transferring to the Lions. He has all the potential, just needs to put it together and throw strikes consistently.
As far as the COVID situation goes, Coach Fucarino stated that he’s been very pleased with how things have gone. They’re in their sixth week of training in their groups. Due to the fact that they didn’t have much of a 2020 season, he stated that they would’ve needed to build up their workouts gradually anyway, so the phased re-opening of the athletic program has not really deterred their workouts in any way..
“Overall, the situation has been challenging but you gotta get through it. Guys have been phenomenal, the coaches have been phenomenal. Fall ball is a lot of group work to begin with. So we’ve done a lot of individual instruction. We just missed out on our outside competition. Last year we played Hofstra, Fordham and Adelphi. It was great and hopefully we can do that when we get past Covid,” said Fucarino.
They will play a 40-game season in 2021 as the NCAA has limited their number of competitions from 50. Additionally, they will likely stay in-region this season. Everything is a fluid situation and all depending on how the virus plays out in the winter.
“Our hope is to be on this field in spring – that could all change tomorrow, though.”
