Kingston senior Hayner named Pitcher of Year
Kingston High left-hander Jeff Hayner, who went 6-1, was named Freeman Pitcher of the Year.
KINGSTON, N.Y. » Jeff Hayner made history this year at Kingston High as his pitching helped carry the Tigers to the state final four.
The senior lefthander threw a perfect game and a one-hitter in a season that saw him use his experience and repertoire to silence the opposition.
“It was a great season for myself and the team,” the Freeman’s Pitcher of the Year said. “We got to the final four. I threw a perfect game, which was an accomplishment I never thought I would have done. Put together, week in and week out, we got wins when we had to.
“I want to be humble with it,
but I pitched well with my team behind me and the offense helping me out. It was a great season.”
Hayner posted a 6-1 record, throwing four shutouts, with a 1.20 ERA.
“This year I definitely had more velocity. I had more command of the strike zone. The outs were the same, but the command of the strike zone really helped me out, it really helped limit my walks,” he said.
The stats reflected the improvement. His ERA last year was 2.42. Opponents hit .242 off him in 2016, compared to .147 this season.
The high point was May 9 at Middletown when he pitched only the second perfect game in program history and the first in 69 years since Clark Mains accomplished it in 1948.
“My last no-hitter? It was modified baseball, maybe travel ball. I was like 12 or 13 years old around then, said Hayner, who is now 17.
He fanned five that day, including the final batter.
“The adrenaline was certainly pumping. Just knowing that it was a strike, it was a great feeling. That last pitch is one I’m always going to remember. Called strike. down and out,” he said. “It was a great feeling finishing it up on my own, finishing up with five strikeouts. It was not a lot of strikeouts, but to be successful, strikeouts isn’t everything.”
He came close to another no-hitter 18 days later when he tossed a onehitter against Mid-Hudson Athletic League champion Roosevelt in the Section 9, Class AA semifinals. It was the first one-hitter for Kingston since Matt Petro threw one eight years ago.
Hayner finished with 41 strikeouts in 40 1/3 innings.
“I’ve never really been a strikeout pitcher, especially when I got to the 60-foot mound,” he said. “It’s just more about getting outs, pitching to contact and trust in your defense behind you.
“I really didn’t have so much like an out pitch, just keeping the ball low in the zone helped me get my outs. With my guys in the infield, keeping that ball low keeps the ball on the ground and that’s when I trust them. If I get them ground balls, they’ll make the outs.”
Hayner’s repertoire included four-seam and twoseam fastballs, a split-finger fastball, curveball and a circle changeup.
“My best is my twoseamer and my changeup. They both have nice movement and the changeup coming after the fastball is nice,” he noted. “I developed a curveball this year which really, I think, was one of my better pitches. It was really effective when I got deep in the counts or just to get outs on firstpitch.
“I started throwing the curve, fooling around with it in August and in my fall season with travel last year. Then when I got to the winter workouts this year, I really started developing it and really made it into a pitch I can throw consistently in the game.
“Last year it was very inconsistent. Sometimes it would have that nice break on it and other times it was just a flat meatball being hit 400 feet. I didn’t even give it to my catcher to call until this year. It was just something I’d mess around with once in a while.”
Hayner, who will be attending Niagara University this fall, knew he needed to develop a curve if he wanted to succeed at the next level. In preparation, he is playing with the Saugerties Stallions of the Perfect Game Collegiate League this summer.
“I’d really like to develop my curveball into a nice one that I can really use effectively at that level,” he explained. “I can see that being a really good out pitch for me up there. I also want to get the velocity up a little bit. I’d like to get up to the 90s, maybe hopefully. It’s asking for a lot at this point, but anything’s possible if you work hard enough.”
Hayner pitched in the state semifinal loss to Liverpool, allowing three earned runs on 10 hits in 5 2/3 innings.
“It really wasn’t my best outing,” he admitted. “They found the holes. They hit well. You can’t take anything away from them. They’re a solid team. They ended up winning it all.”
Hayner had a big RBI infield single in the fourth inning that got the Tigers within 3-2.
“Hits didn’t come to me a lot this year, so getting that RBI single was huge,” he said.
“Just to get to the final four is huge on its own. It’s only the third time in school history. It’s great for us to do that. It’s something we’re always going to remember, keep our heads high about,” Hayner said. “At the end of the day, we came up short, but just getting there is an accomplishment on its own.”