AJ Petraitis (Kings Park 2022) pic.twitter.com/jcHtKCoRqS
— Axcess Baseball LI (@axcessbaseball) April 3, 2020
It took a year but Andrew Abreu will soon coach his first game as Head Coach for Kings Park. The former All-Region 2B at Dowling is excited to get going and is leaning on a talented, young pitching staff that has a lot of promise.
“We have a lot of quality arms,” said Abreu. “That’s our strength which we think is critical this year. We have five guys battling it out for rotation spots. With the possibility of playing four games per week, it’s going to be a little more tricky this year,” he added in regarding to navigating through 28 innings per week.
@CoachSorgie | part of my pen from 1/24/21 pic.twitter.com/e20zH66r81
— aidan colagrande (@AidanColagrande) January 26, 2021
Senior Mason Calafati is a 6’4 RHP that is committed to Stevenson. Perfect Game has his fastball velocity at 84 MPH, which will certainly play at this level. Their other pitcher with varsity experience is senior RHP Declan Cumming. Two junior RHPs that are in the mix is AJ Petraitis and Ryan Callaghan. The lone southpaw of the group is junior Aidan Colagrande. Abreu is confident that the competition will allow the four best pitchers to form their 4-game rotation and the remaining pitcher will be one of the go-to arms out of the pen.
As far as the offense, they will have a lineup that, by and large, is a reflection of the ballplayer that Abreu was. But they will also be very young and inexperienced due to the composition of last year’s roster which had 8 seniors that garnered much of the playing time the prior year.
“In terms of varsity at bats, we don’t have any,” he said. “But what we do have is a bunch of super athletic and gritty players that will grind at bats. We may not have the game experience but they will be prepared by the time the season starts,” he added.
“It’s fun to win the gritty way,” he said. Abreu went on to add that they have some talented underclassmen that could be called up and that they have positional versatility which is “really important to have”, he added.
They have been fortunate that the district has permitted team workouts dating back to last October, and he has been able to get his team together in split squad twice per week for the past weeks. The only caveat being they have some multi-sport athletes that have been told to stick with their current sport in order to comply with contact tracing.
Their crop of 2020 seasons was a significant one. They have four players at the Division-III level right now – catcher Nick Carlson (John Jay), Nick Pinggera (SUNY Maritime), Gerard O’Hare (Marywood) and Jayson Forneiro (Roger Williams)
In terms of the conference, it’s a pretty talented one. They will face Sayville, Rocky Point, Hills West, Islip, Miller Place, East Hampton, Westhampton and Harborfields.
“It’s going to be a nice challenge – there’s a lot of good competition in the conference.” They will open up on May 8 against East Hampton at Moriches Complex beginning at 5pm.
