Seattle Mariners RHP Justin Dunn throwing a bullpen to Oceanside catcher Zachary Horowitz pic.twitter.com/Rxws00VAdm
— Axcess Baseball LI (@axcessbaseball) February 23, 2020
A perfect example of the state of college baseball recruiting is that Oceanside has four college commits on their roster yet none of them have appeared in a varsity game yet. For the first time ever, colleges were forced to rely on something other than varsity baseball to determine who was capable of playing at the next level.
Oceanside HC Mike Postillo, now entering his ninth season noted how truly unique this situation has been.
“I was talking with Frank (Tassielli), the Farmingdale coach, and joking that the last game I coached was the exceptional senior game in June 2019 and those kids are in their second year of college now,” he said. That really puts into perspective how long the high school baseball players have waited since their last actual game.
Back in 2019, Oceanside was coming off another successful season. They defeated Farmingdale in the first round of the playoffs, but lost in three games to the upstart Port Washington Vikings in the semifinals to finish with a record of 16-8. That was a bit of a surprise, being that Oceanside was especially loaded that season with five players that were three-year varsity starters (Jake Lazzaro, Noah Eisel, Chris Siklas, Leo Alvarez and Austin Vlahakis) and seven of their seniors went onto play in college.
Walk-off single by Austin Vlahakis wins it for Oceanside 9-8! pic.twitter.com/epUEkiTaCg
— Axcess Baseball LI (@axcessbaseball) April 11, 2019
Last year was set to be a transitional year as they were going to be relatively inexperienced and Postillo noted they had two sophomores that were likely to start.
“Every year you have players that come out of nowhere and I was really looking forward to the surprise of who it would be. So many things were taken away from those kids,” he added, mentioning that typically they start the season playing in a minor league stadium like the Brooklyn Cyclones or Staten Island Yankees and the kids get to have their own lockers and all the thrills that come along with playing in a professional stadium.
“I remember last year talking to the guys and saying ‘I don’t know what’s going on with this virus but take your gear home this weekend and wash it.’ That was the last time we met on the field. Luckily, we were able to put a team in the Boys of Summer league and I went down and helped out. So I was happy that they got to play together and wear the Oceanside jerseys for the summer.”
This year’s team is even more inexperienced as none of their players have appeared in a varsity game despite having those four college commits. They are catcher Zach Horowitz (SUNY Plattsburgh), P/SS Tyler Cinamon (SUNY Cobleskill), LHP/CF Zach Ducorsky (SUNY Cobleskill) and Johnathan Rosano (Russell Sage College).
They have some other players that he is excited about as well. He stated that his junior class appears to be very talented. He named LHP George LaRosa, OF/P Kevin Klein, 1b Mario DePasquale, INF Peter Davies, INF Jack Schulz, C/OF Justin Delgado, C Ryan McFall and 6’2 10th grader Michael Furst as potential contributors.
Postillo stated that his favorite part of the job is assisting kids in the process of finding where they’ll play college ball.
“The reason you do what you do is to help kids get exposure and for me it’s to genuinely help them get to the next level. I love that aspect of coaching. I love to keep in touch with the guys, sometimes I’ll stay in touch with players from 10-15 years ago. It’s about maintaining relationships. You have to get the kids to believe they can do it. And that’s from fostering relationships. They need to know you actually care about them and are invested in them as a person. You have to care about them and have their best interests in mind,” he added.
Postillo has some former players that are currently thriving at their current levels of play. Jake Lazzaro, who was a three-sport star for Oceanside, is currently the starting shortstop for St. John’s and has essentially held down that role since the day he stepped on campus. Dylan Judd, a 2018 graduate, is the starting catcher at UMASS and just hit his sixth home run of the season.
“Jake is a stud – he’s phenomenal. I remember talking to him when he was younger and he was sometimes going from football to basketball to baseball and I told him ‘wait till you get your baseball body – you are just scratching the surface of your potential,” he said, referring to when he would be able to strictly focus on and train for baseball and not be exhausted from playing three sports per year. Jake has started all 17 games for the Red Storm and leads the team with a .488 OBP and has more walks than strikeouts while playing a great defensive SS. Postillo noted that he’s trying to help get both him and Judd into the Cape Cod League. There’s also Noah Eisel who has been a two-way player for New Haven and Leo Alvarez who was the Player of the Week in the CACC Conference last year.
While all of those players are doing great, none can yet match the career accomplishments of Kyle Martin, the former Diamond Award winner for Postillo, recent draft pick out of Fordham and currently minor league pitcher for Baltimore Orioles. Postillo stated that he spoke with him yesterday after his first minor league outing of the spring and he struck out the side on 13 pitches in front of several Orioles’ front office decision makers.
“He just has a desire to keep learning – he’s like a sponge he’s always trying to improve,” said Postillo. “One of the things scouts would say about him in college was that he had a fresh arm and that’s because he didn’t pitch until his junior year, we only played him at shortstop even though we knew he had the highest ceiling,” he added.
That decision appeared to have worked out well as Martin is thriving and I wouldn’t be surprised if we see him in the big leagues later this season.
This year’s Oceanside team will be looking to return to that level of excitement of Sailors baseball from 2016-2019 and they will open up on May 4 against Syosset.
