BROTHERS IN ARMS
Ward Melville's Kay can exceed mentor Matz in MLB draft
Anthony Kay didn’t have to look far for inspiration. He saw it in the stands, or in offseason workouts or the newspaper. Sometimes on a walk around his Stony Brook neighborhood.
Steven Matz — who preceded him at Ward Melville High School on Long Island and reached the major leagues with the hometown Mets last summer — set the bar Kay is determined to reach, and serves as further motivation.
“Watching him go through the minor leagues, watching him get drafted, it makes me want to end up being just like him,” Kay said in a phone interview. “It’s awesome. He’s like a celebrity. Hopefully I can be like that one day. Pitch in the major leagues like him.”
He’s about to take a significant step in that pursuit. The UConn pitcher is projected to be taken high in this week’s MLB First-Year Player Draft, perhaps even in the first round, when it kicks off Thursday night. Ranked as the No. 33 prospect in the country by Baseball America, the hardthrowing southpaw with the put-away changeup and fastball in the mid 90’s is likely to go even higher than Matz, the Mets’ second-round pick (72nd overall) in 2009.
“Steven is the face of Ward Melville baseball. Steven is the guy that put us on the map,” Ward Melville coach Lou Petrucci said. “Anthony picked up the torch.”
Unlike Matz, who didn’t become a full-time starting pitcher until his senior year of high school — his first three years he did most of his damage as a hitter — Kay was a starter from Day 1. He won 20 games, leading the school to the state semifinals his senior year, further than any of Matz’s teams ever got. Kay won the 2012 Paul Gibson award, given to the best pitcher on Long Island, while Matz won the Yastrzemski Award as the best high-school player in Suffolk County as a senior in 2009.
“I’m excited for him,” Matz said. “It’s cool to see someone come out of my high school and do what he’s done in college.”
When Matz was recovering from Tommy John surgery, he would attend Ward Melville games, and watch Kay pitch. They work out together in the offseason at their old high school. Matz has given Kay advice on what to expect when he be- comes a professional and always told him to be confident, no matter the opponent.
There are natural comparisons between the two, which Kay doesn’t mind.
“I think it’s always a good thing when you’re getting compared to a major league pitcher,” he said.
Besides both being lefthanders that threw in the low 90’s in high school, Petrucci said the biggest similarity between the two is their competitive fire,
Out of high school, Kay was taken in the 29th round by the Mets in the 2013 draft (866th overall). His father Bob said the family set an asking price of $500,000 that scared off teams.
However, UConn coach Jim Penders sold Kay he would become a top-fiveround pick after playing with the Huskies.
Kay told Petrucci: “I’m going to go to college and make everybody pay when they draft me as a junior.”
“And now,” the coach said with a laugh, “they’re going to pay. … He went from the 29th round to almost the 29th pick.”