NEWS
St. John the Baptist Relying on Pitching and Defense
Casey McKay, now in his second-year as Head Coach at St. John the Baptist, knows a thing or two about winning. During his playing days at SJB, he led the Cougars to a CHSAA league title in 2008 and finishing runner-up in 2007. He also had a successful collegiate career at LIU Post. He will have a challenge this year in replacing their high-level of production from last year’s seniors–Kevin Dolan, Noah Lorenzo, Nick Lasala and Tom Ekbom. The first two are now playing at LIU Post, Lasala is at Farmingdale State and Ekbom is at St. Joseph’s. “This year’s team is a lot different than last year,” said McKay. “We had a lot of guys that hit for power and extra bases, we will have to rely a lot more on our speed, pitching and defense this year,”...
Avoiding Complacency
Each and every season brings high expectations for the upcoming year. Long Island crowned eight county champions in 2016. Center Moriches (Suffolk B), East Meadow (Nassau AA), Mt Sinai (Suffolk A), Smithtown Christian (Suffolk D), Southold (Suffolk C), Wantagh (Nassau A) Wheatley (Nassau B) and West Islip (Class AA) all won county championships last spring. These teams all hope to repeat last year’s success but also must be aware of the potential for complacency due to lofty expectations and being overconfident. Another hurdle these teams will have is that their opponents will all have extra motivation to unseat these champions. As a defending champion or even a team that had an outstanding 2016, you must avoid the thought of being invincible the following year. Many things change each ye...
Plainview-JFK Led By Elite Rotation
It was a frustrating ending to the 2016 season for Plainview-JFK who lost to the eventual Class AA champs from East Meadow by the scores of 4-3 and 6-4, despite beating them two of three during the regular season. “We thought we were right there,” said fourth year Head Coach John Givargidze. “We took two of three from East Meadow to start the season but they were red-hot when they got to the playoffs,” he added. They finished the season 13-8, but will be returning almost all of their impact players with the exception of leadoff man Jake Saltzman (Molloy). They will be counting on All-County third baseman Matt Butigan, All-County RHP/SS Mark Faello and All-Conference RHP/OF Tyler Marinaccio. Butigan, however, is nursing a strained UCL and will most likely miss the fi...
Insider Notes: March 20
Today there were three scrimmages going on simultaneously at Baseball Heaven. I was able to watch a little bit of all three of them and here are my observations from them: Bellport vs Floyd: A.J. Verga started for Floyd and he was impressive. The sophomore has pretty clean mechanics and the ball explodes out of his hand. He got lots of swings-and-misses. If they are to have a big season, he will be a big reason. Ryan Bouman smacked a HR over the right field fence. It got out in a hurry–not a typical majestic HR but a line drive that barely got off the ground. It was very impressive. I hadn’t heard of him, but that swing certainly got my attention. Very few legit power hitters from the northeast. He is uncommitted but if he’s going to swing like that during the regular sea...
Power Rankings Volume 4
Weather caused many more cancellations this week (what else is new?). But there was still plenty of games that will factor into this week’s Power Rankings. In this edition, we are going to do things slightly different considering the difficulty in differentiating teams with less than 10 games under their belt. I will separate teams into five tiers based on their current record, momentum and likelihood of turning their seasons around. Tier 1- The Elite St. Johns (Record: 14-2, Stock UP) Another great week for the Johnnies, winning both of their games. They are hitting .323 as a team with a 2.62 ERA. John Valente is batting .486 and is headed towards an All-American season. Tier 2- Trending Up 2. Adelphi (Record: 8-6, Stock UP) Great offensive week down in Florida despite the 5-0 loss ...
Travis Bruinsma Fires Gem to Salvage Split Against Staten Island
SUNY Maritime Privateers faced off against the College of Staten Island Dolphins in a nautically-themed doubleheader today. Maritime lost game one after an incredible comeback by Staten Island, but rallied to win the second game behind the masterful pitching of Travis Bruinsma. Maritime wasted no time in game one scoring three runs in the first. Shortstop Matt Costleigh smacked a leadoff home run. Costleigh’s shot to right center got the Privateers started, and they added on runs with an RBI ground out and an RBI single by Aaron Schiavoni and Phil Russo, respectively. They added another run in the second on a sacrifice fly from Costleigh, then another in the fourth on a single up the middle by Chris Deddo. Maritime was up five to nothing after 5 1/3 innings thanks to the pitching of ...
Jade Maldonado: Getting Her Shot
Jade Maldonado is just like every other 16-year-old girl, except that she plays on the Pierson/Bridgehampton JV Baseball Team. While this may seem strange, it’s all Maldonado knows. She played t-ball and little league baseball growing up and switching to softball wasn’t on option for her. Maldonado grew up surrounded by baseball. Her father and grandfather had both played when they were younger and the Yankees were always on TV or the center of the conversation. From an early age she looked up to Jackie Robinson, the first black baseball player in the MLB, because of their similar stories. She noted how they share the story of breaking boundaries in baseball. Like Robinson, Maldonado’s road hasn’t been easy. There has been road block after road block. She found that she didn’t have support...
The Man Behind the ‘Boys of Summer’
The year was 2005. Myspace was dominating the social network landscape. Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat were not invented, “selfie” was not a part of normal lexicon and people did not get rich by posting photos with well-placed hashtags. Before the proliferation of social media, it was very difficult to build anything from the ground up. Besides a brilliant idea, it required a massive amount of word-of-mouth testimonials and plenty of hustle. The league we now know as the “Boys of Summer” didn’t even have a name. It was simply a league consisting of 14 travel teams primarily from eastern Suffolk County playing on a few of the local high school fields. Fast forward to 2016 and the league had exploded in size to 240 teams from all over Long Island–plus Que...
LIU Post Splits Dramatic DH with Le Moyne
LIU Post and Le Moyne both braved the cold for a pair of games that were shortened to seven innings. Post won the first game 3-1, but fell in game two 5-2. The first pitch was at 10 am, while the sun was trying to peek out from behind the clouds. Jake DeCarli took the mound and shut down Le Moyne’s bats. His breaking ball was spectacular, time and again he would use it to get ahead of batters on the first pitch. DeCarli threw the complete seven inning game, giving up just one run, six hits and one walk while striking out 10 batters. Although, that’s not to say there weren’t any close calls, but whenever Le Moyne would threaten, DeCarli would settle in earning his second win of the season in the process. Offensively, Post was out-hit by Le Moyne–tallying only four hi...
Nick Fanti on His Experience in the World Baseball Classic
by Nick Fanti My experience in the world baseball classic is something that I can’t stop talking about. A moment I want to talk about is the first game vs Mexico. I will never say the Italian team was an underdog in this bracket because we were not. We belonged there because we knew what kind of team we had and we showed that we belonged in that game We were down four going into the bottom of the ninth and we were actually the home team against the host Mexico with one of the best closers in baseball on the mound in Roberto Osuna. We came back to score five runs without Mexico recording a single out. We dog piled, and I got some tv time. You will never see a stadium flip from loud to silent like that stadium did that night. But the significance of this game to me was crazy and differ...
3/17 Recap
Several schools were in action on the diamond (not the shamrock) this St. Patrick’s Day. And Fordham, St. John’s, and Old Westbury were definitely feeling the luck of the Irish, even if Old Westbury was the only one wearing green. Division I Fordham sweeps Sacred Heart in a doubleheader: 1-0 & 2-1 Fordham eked out a 1-0 victory in a pitching duel against Sacred Heart, thanks to the spectacular performance by starting pitcher Jimmy Murphy. Murphy was dominant on the mound today, throwing eight innings of shutout two-hit ball and earning his first win of the season. He was perfect through the first 2 1/3 innings and struck out fourteen batters while walking just two. It was clear from the very start that he had his best stuff today, striking out two of the first three batters...
Babylon Motivated By Loss In Class B Final
It was a phenomenal coaching job by Head Coach Victor Manzella to guide the Panthers to the Class B Suffolk County Championship in a season in which he took over just two days prior to tryouts. He was led by a very strong season by senior Anthony Vano and juniors Shaun Kaminsky and Ken Gordon. Watch the video as Vinny Messana speaks with Manzella and Gordon about their 2017 season.
