Long Island's Sean Keys rises quickly through Toronto Blue Jays system for MLB debut

TORONTO — Sean Keys was a sophomore on the Harborfields High School baseball team — still very much an underclassman despite his size — when he asked his coach if maybe, just maybe, they should cut the music.

“We were getting our teeth kicked in,” then-coach Casey Sturm recalled. “But we had walk-up music and we were coming out to, you know, WWF wrestling songs — it was stupid and cheesy but it was great…

“But we were down 9-0 or something and he goes, ‘Coach, do you think maybe it’s time to kill the music?’ I said, ‘Sean, you’re 100% right.’ Nobody would tell me that — an assistant coach wouldn’t say that. But he had the mind, the wherewithal, the respect for it all.”

It was a brief conversation, a forgettable game, and a story nearly a decade old. But it’s moments like that that help create moments like these. It’s how a kid who didn’t even entertain the thought of pro ball until his sophomore year of college rocketed through the ranks to play his first major league game Saturday with the Blue Jays.

It’s why, with just a day’s notice, friends and family flocked to Toronto by car and by air. Those who couldn’t make the trek found other ways to be part of the moment. Sturm watched at home, “beaming with pride” and just a little sick to his stomach. Keys’ travel league coach, Pete Kritikos, was in the middle of a showcase, watching Keys from his phone screen. Keys’ coaches from Bucknell spammed the group chat with video from the Rogers Centre.

“It’s been crazy,” said Kritikos, head coach of the MVP Beast travel team. “You get chills…From when he was young, we always knew Sean is a little different from everyone else.”

And Keys does seem to be an outlier. At batting practice before their game against the Mets Monday, he showed off his fluid, lefty swing. Despite his age (23) and his service time (about three days), he’s gregarious, poised, and well spoken.

“It was just a shock, honestly,” Keys told Newsday. “At first, I thought there was no way. I wasn’t expecting it at all. Then I immediately called my parents to tell them the great news and news spread fast. I had a good gang come for the first game.”

And he rewarded them. Keys, a corner infielder, collected his first hit in front of about 20 of his friends and family Saturday. There’s reason to believe there’s more where that came from: At 6-2, 225 pounds, he has excellent raw power, notable bat-to-ball skills, and slashed .284/.409/.618 over 67 games in Double and Triple-A this year, with 21 homers and 54 RBIs.

Or, as Blue Jays manager John Schneider told reporters, “The power is real.”

“He even had a somewhat polished swing at 10 or 11,” Kritikos said. “He was always kind of stronger — his dad is a big guy — but he had this weird ability to always get the barrel on the baseball.”

Mentally, “he was always Mr. Cool. I was texting him yesterday and I’m like, you didn’t even seem nervous. I felt like I was more nervous than you were during your at bats. He said he might’ve been a little nervous, but he wasn’t always [so calm]. He definitely matured. I noticed the difference when he got to high school where I think he realized that, ‘Hey, I can get out as long as I have a productive at bat.’”

Keys pretty much confirms this. He was drafted in the fourth round in 2024 and started to scuffle when he made it to High-A the year after, batting .217. He made the needed adjustments, learned more about what pitchers were trying to do to him, but also just…let go.

“Ultimately, a lot of it is just unlocking my athleticism and the natural ability that I’ve accrued from playing my entire life and just letting it go,” Keys said. “Not trying to control everything and just playing free out there.”

Sturm doesn’t take too much credit for Keys’ success — mostly he just enjoys watching “a truly good human being” have success, but maybe he had more of an impact than he thinks.

“People ask me what it was like coaching him, and I’m like, ‘I just tried to stay out of the way,’ Sturm said. “I don’t want to mess this kid up. He’s a talented kid. It’s funny, the one thing I think back — did I teach him anything? — and the answer is probably to relax and have some fun at baseball.”

He remembers one batting practice when Keys was intent on hitting the ball the opposite way, and “I was like, ‘Hey, Sean, listen — I don’t care what happens here. I want you to pull these next 10 balls and it was like something clicked with him where he started hitting the ball so hard. It’s not that he wasn’t hitting the ball hard before, it was like an, ‘Oh wait a minute. I can do that, too.’”

In all, it’s created a lingering philosophy. One that’s brought Keys to the big leagues, and, in his own way, allowed him to thank the people who helped pave the way for him.

“Baseball is never figured out,” Keys said. “It’s a very hard game, a game of failure like everyone always says. You can take it while it’s good and also know there will be times you’ll have to figure more stuff out and work through tough times. But I have so much fun playing.”

And the Long Island contingent should have plenty of fun watching him. Some of his cousins were still in Toronto Monday. His parents came this past weekend. Sturm and Kritikos are planning a road trip, too.

“It’s been incredible, unbelievable,” Keys said. “I want to succeed for all the people that have helped me on this journey and this year and it work out this year has really been special.”

By Laura Albanese

laura.albanese@newsday.com@AlbaneseLaura

Laura Albanese is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. She's been covering MLB since 2014 after starting at Newsday as an intern seven years earlier.