In 2013-’14, there was no team more dominant than Bayport-Blue Point and on that team, there was no more dominant player than Jack Piekos. The Phantoms became the first Suffolk County program to capture back-to-back State Championships (that has since been duplicated by Center Moriches). They went a perfect 27-0 in 2013 and followed that up by defending their crown and winning it again in 2014.
Piekos was the biggest reason for that success. The menacing left-handed pitcher won every award you can – League VII MVP, All-County, All-Long Island, All-State, Class A Player of the Year, Fred Biangardi Playoff MVP, MSG Varsity Pitcher of the Year, All-Northeast Honor from Perfect Game and 2x Paul Gibson Award winner.
With a fastball touching 90 MPH and an unflappable demeanor, he committed to the University of Maryland two weeks after winning their first Class A Championship.
Now 26-years-old, Piekos has come to terms with his winding path that took him to four different colleges and wound up with him graduating from Farmingdale State College with a business administration degree. He has no regrets with how things shook out. The lefty reminisced on a career that saw meteoric highs and some valleys that had him wondering if he let people down. But now he says, “it was an amazing time – it was the most fun of my life – and I’m completely blessed.”
Let’s take a look back.
Growing up as a Yankee fan in the late 90s, early 2000s, it is no wonder that Jack grew up idolizing Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera. He found himself drawn to how they not only won on the field, but how they handled themselves with class off the field.
Unlike most players that ultimately go far in the game of baseball, Jack did not play competitively until the age of 12. For that reason, he feels he was a ‘late bloomer’ and never got the same respect as some of Long Island’s other stars during that time such as Matt Vogel of Patchogue-Medford, Adam Heidenfelder of MacArthur and Patrick Bryant of Center Moriches.
“I wasn’t really able to make a name for myself like some others. Vogel and Justin Dunn were head & shoulders above where I was at that time and it was probably because of the mental aspect. I wasn’t really confident in myself and really beat myself up when I was younger. Then it all kind of came to fruition my sophomore year – after that my mentality really changed.”
Due to starting his playing career late, Piekos was playing on town teams and the Outlaws until he came into his own as a player. He was brought up to play varsity as a 9th grader – which is pretty quick considering he was still learning the game. After two decent years, he broke out in a big way – as did the entire team.
“I remember when I got to high school, Bayport wasn’t all that good. I remember hearing about Sayville and how they had Brendan Butler and we would lose to them. But my sophomore year, the team was getting there. The kids hung out outside of baseball and on the weekends. By junior year, it was a much older team with a lot of seniors. We were a very close knit team. Even if some people didn’t like each other, when they got on that field – they had each other’s backs. We built a bond that I didn’t have on other teams.”
That camaraderie was a big reason for their massive jump in 2013 from a playoff contender to a historic team – they did have two players from the senior class that went on to play college baseball and that was Chris Brewer (New Paltz) and Luke Brown (St. Joseph’s College). From the other grad classes – they had Matt McKinnon (NJIT & College of St. Rose), Sal Geraci (Queens College), Dan Campanelli (St. Joseph’s College), P.J. Weeks (FDU & Plattsburgh), Rob Acierno (York) and Jake Liberatore (Stetson and Iona). Rather than a group of D-I commits, they played cohesive, fundamental baseball.
When the 2013 season started, they started winning – and just kept winning. Piekos stated that they would go to Applebees after every win – which he admitted “we went quite a few times.” Piekos stated that by the time the team was 14 or 15 wins into the season, they took it to another level. “It’s hard to explain now – because at the time it seemed like everything just flowed to us but I think the team got hungrier. We wanted that attention and that notoriety and we didn’t want it to go away. It pushed everyone harder and we stopped caring completely about individual stats.”
They became the first Suffolk County team since Walt Whitman in 1975 to go undefeated through the County Championship – which was a 5-2 win over Miller Place behind a gem by senior Chris Brewer. It was their first County Championship since 2004.
Entering the Long Island Championship against Clarke, Piekos still felt they weren’t being taken seriously.
“Even going into that game, we were referred to as the ‘small-ball team’ and Clarke was the ‘monsters of Nassau’. Piekos pitched that championship game against Clarke in front of a packed house at Farmingdale State College.
“It was just a wired atmosphere,” said Piekos. “We went from playing in front of 30-40 people at a small high school to this. It felt like a college baseball game. Fans were cheering from the first pitch. There was a little bit of pressure because I didn’t want to let down my town or my team – but I like to think I fed off that stuff. And Maryland was there to watch me – they actually offered me after the game.”
They wound up winning that game, 4-1, with Piekos going the distance against a loaded Clarke team that had averaged over 12 runs per game over the regular season with players like Joey Fusco and John Fogarty that went on to have great college careers. In fact, Fusco recorded the only RBI of the game – a well-struck double that Piekos stated he thought was a home run off the bat. Piekos outdueled future MLB Draft pick Matt Seelinger – who is still in the minor leagues
After that game, not only were they in elite company at 25-0 but Piekos star had begun to rise as not only Maryland was interested – but many local Division-I programs like Stony Brook and St. John’s as well as Marist, Winthrop and Radford. At that time, his velocity was in the mid-to-upper 80s, but he had great command of his fastball and change up and clearly the results spoke for themselves.
In the state semifinals, they faced their biggest challenge yet.
“That was the first time where we weren’t sure if we’d win,” said Piekos. “It was the rare scenario where the dugout had a different vibe. It was, by far, the closest we’d come to losing.” (Editor’s Note: They did win several one-run ballgames during the season including a three-game sweep against John Glenn). “It was one of those games wher the nerves were running high from the first pitch.” The reason for that anxiety was because it was the only time they faced a pitcher on the same level of Piekos. Queensbury RHP Charlie Peltz also entered with an unblemished record of 11-0 and he wound up striking out 140 batters. He had appeared in Sports Illustrated for firing three consecutive no-hitters during the season. He was First Team All-State and wound up playing at Albany. BBP defeated him 4-0, with all four runs coming in the bottom of the sixth. Piekos fired a five-hit shutout with all five hits coming with two outs – including two in the top of the sixth when he stranded runners and 2nd & 3rd with two out. Brewer notched the game-winning hit on a bloop single in the bottom of the sixth with the bases loaded. The win proved that they had luck on their side.
In the state finals without Piekos available, they turned to sophomore P.J. Weeks, who led them to the State Championship win over Williamsville South to complete the perfect season. They became the first Class A team to go undefeated and win the State Championship since the state switched to that format in 1981. They were the first Suffolk team to win every game it played since Huntington in 1949.
BBP went the entire season hitting just one HR. So perhaps it was fair to call them a small-ball team, but don’t say they weren’t deserving. For Piekos, he went 11-0 with a 0.38 ERA over 73 innings with 111 strikeouts. He won just about ever award imaginable including the coveted Paul Gibson Award and Class A Player of Year for New York.
After the season, it was right back to work for Piekos who played for the Body Armor Titans and went on his recruiting visits. He stated that while Stony Brook, St. John’s and Maryland were his top choices, he knew that Maryland was the right fit for him since he pitched there the summer before in a tournament.
“Two weeks after the state tournament I committed. It had been my dream school since the year before. It wasn’t SEC big, but it was still ACC. They were relatively close – a four or four-and-a-half hour drive from home. As soon as I took my official visit I was just excited to commit there,” he said.
Now with the target on their backs and a Division-I commitment under his belt, they went to work on a repeat. The undefeated stretch ended, so that was no longer a distraction but they still had a championship title to embark on.
“Senior year was definitely different in terms of notoriety. The expectations were raised, there was more pressure. I noticed people were writing about us more. People took us more seriously. But even then, before the season there was a season preview and they featured Heidenfelder and Bryant. And I remember reading that and thinking – I needed to pick it up.”
That’s what drives the great players – finding constant ways to stay motivated. And that’s exactly what happened as the Phantoms – led by Piekos – successful defended their crown with a 4-0 victory over League Champs Shoreham-Wading River.
Then in the Long Island Championship, he felt it was deja vu as everyone was talking about Division’s terrific offense.
“It was the same thing against Division – people were talking about how they were scoring 13 runs per game with that offense. I remember they had Mark Martinez and those two good pitchers,” he said in regards to James Varela and Anthony Papa. This time the game was at Dowling College, but it was the same story as Piekos fired a five-hit shutout with no walks – which was the only time Division was shut out all season.
They weren’t undefeated, they had a 20-6 record after winning the LIC but they were headed back to Binghamton.
In the state semifinal, Piekos was lights-out once again. He fired a complete game against Pittsford Sutherland which was a 2-1 final. That brought his record to 10-1 on the season with a total of 122 strikeouts in 74 innings. It also brought his career record to 21-1 – his only loss came against SWR in May.
For a team that struggled offensively for much of the year, they certainly didn’t look that way in the state finals as they trounced Rye, 13-2, in the state finals. It capped a heroic run for BBP as they were 48-6 over two years and had two Class A New York State titles to show for it.
Piekos was not drafted – only Jesse Berardi of Commack was drafted from the 2014 class on Long Island – but he was headed to Maryland with no reason to believe pro ball wasn’t in his future. But things didn’t work out as planned. So what went wrong?
“Going back to my final game in my senior year, I hurt my shoulder. It turns out it was a torn ligament near the rotator cuff. I didn’t find that out until June or July. I figured I would just take a month off from throwing after the season since I threw a lot that year. But when I got to Maryland, I didn’t pick a ball up until about a month in and I only got to pitch in our Fall World Series during the last week. I didn’t really go to class either. I thought it would be like high school and I thought everything would flow to me – but it was just a terrible mindset. I didn’t take care of my grades… I felt like I was deserving of more. They yanked me around a little. Also I spoke to the pitching coach and he told me ‘you’re one of the only lefties in the bullpen – you’ll get innings.’ I probably should’ve worked harder. I hated being the one that was stuck behind. I felt bitter. I felt like I could make a name for myself somewhere else. I think it just stemmed from a lack of maturity. I didn’t step back and analyze it the way I should’ve,” he said.
Piekos threw just three innings as a freshman at Maryland in a 66-game season. When he came home, he pitched in the HCBL and wound up throwing very well – sitting 88-92 MPH. He stated he was very close to just going to Suffolk CC. Through a mutual friend, he wound up getting noticed by a Florida Southwestern coach – a new program located in Fort Meyers, FL and they played their home games at the Boston Red Sox Spring Training complex. The coach told him they’d love to have him.
He wound up leading the team in innings that season with 75.2, but didn’t dominate the way he was accustomed to – with a 4.76 ERA and 3-4 record. But still, he called it a “great experience – had some really good moments but I was not consistent. My velocity was 89-93 MPH, but consistently 89,” he said which was not enough in the eyes of the scouts despite being lefty. In that conference, the competition was simply loaded. He mentioned Manatee CC – which was a program that was loaded with future MLB Draft picks.
After that, his next stop was Eastern Kentucky – which again came to fruition from being in the right place at the right time and getting noticed by a coach. When asked if he ever consulted with his former coaches and teammates about his decisions to transfer he said, “no because I was a little shamed that I left Maryland and I felt that I had failed that opportunity. I tried to take it on myself to fix things,” he said.
Over the next two seasons, he was certainly an innings eater, throwing 114 innings over his two seasons but with a record of 5-10 and ERA of 5.84. It was a harsh reminder that baseball is a humbling game and success is not linear.
At that point, it was 2018 and Jack was still undecided what he wanted to do. He came back home to Long Island and sat out a semester before enrolling at Farmingdale State College in the spring of 2019. The Rams have a terrific baseball program and eventually captured the 2019 Skyline Conference. Had they had a pitcher of Piekos’ ilk, they may have competed for a World Series. But since he pitched 3 innings as a freshman and not 0, he had exhausted his college eligibility. It was not from a lack of trying.
“I did a ton of research on my own and found out there was no way I was going to get my freshman year at Maryland back unless I had an injury,” he said. He completed his business administration degree from Farmingdale that May but was not sure what that next phase would be.
He toyed with the idea of traveling around looking for opportunities in indy ball, but opted to bartend instead and took a year to “get over things.”
In regards to bartending he said, “honestly it was a really life changing experience. Working nights was super easy coming out of college, but it also just teaches you about how to deal with all kinds of different people and not get caught up in yourself. Really helped me grow mentally and just overall as a person.”
Around that time, he developed an affinity for the stock market and wanted to get into finance.
“I really wanted to get involved with stocks – that really intrigued me. I shifted my focus and desires from baseball towards that. I wanted to get involved so I got my Chartered Financial Analyst Certification. I signed up in the end of 2019 and took it in June 2020. I did really well – I scored in the 90th percentile. I felt like I really had started to figure myself out a little.”
On a whim, Piekos saw an opening for a Sanctions Compliance Analyst in Tampa, FL and two weeks ago he moved down there and got started working for JP Morgan.
Not quite in the baseball world anymore, but still using his attention to detail that allowed him to be a successful pitcher. Does he still get the itch to play? Not baseball at least – Piekos stated he plays slowpitch softball on a team in Tampa to satisfy that competitive itch he has.
It’s always interesting to follow back up with star baseball players of yesteryear, and while it may be disappointing that the dreams of playing Major League Baseball were not fulfilled – Jack has come to terms with his playing career ending and is happy with his new chapter in life.
