SWR's Billy Steele named Suffolk's top pitcher
Shoreham Wading River's Billy Steele pitches in the Suffolk Class A playoff game against Mt. Sinai on May 18, 2022. Credit: Bob Sorensen
Billy Steele began his ascent through the Long Island high school pitching ranks just three short years ago. On Monday he reached the summit.
The senior righthander from Shoreham-Wading River is the 2022 Paul Gibson Award winner, given annually to Suffolk's most outstanding pitcher. It was announced on Monday night during the Suffolk County Baseball Coaches Association’s All-County Awards dinner at Villa Lombardi’s in Holbrook.
“We are talking about the kind of athlete that comes along about once-in-a-decade,” Wildcats coach Kevin Willi said. “He is the fastest kid on the team and an outstanding hitter. But put him on the mound and he is something else. The season started and he just kept throwing gem after gem.”
Steele didn’t allow an earned run through 41 2/3 regular-season innings while recording a stunning 83 strikeouts. This included a no-hitter with 14 strikeouts against Glenn at the end of April.
For the entire season he was 7-1 with an 0.58 ERA and he held opposing hitters to a .192 batting average. He also batted .374 with a 1.117 OPS and 21 RBI in 21 games. Steele will next be playing baseball at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
“I started to think he was having a special season when he had allowed no runs and just three hits through his first four starts,” Willi said. “They just kept coming. It was amazing that he went through the regular season without allowing an earned run.”
Steele only began pitching during the summer leading into his sophomore season. As a junior he was slotted into the rotation at No. 2 behind Jake Halloran, now at Hofstra. But even then, Willi said, “He was still refining some of the basics of pitching.”
The 6-1, 190-pounder conquered those issues – attacking in the strike zone, fielding the position and holding runners on – by the time this season rolled around. Willi said “everything came together this year and his fastball climbed to 90 mph.”
To get an idea of the sort of special athlete that Steele is, Willi tells a story about a skills competition the Shoreham-Wading River players had at a practice. Steele and Wildcats slugger Liam Bose were tied at the end and it was decided that the tiebreaker would be the longest batted ball on a single for each taken from the batter’s box opposite their natural spot.
Steele got in the righthanded batter’s box and hit a home run that cleared the fence by 30 feet.
“He’s an incredible physical specimen: I’d never seen him swing a bat righty and he just picked up a bat and did that,” Willi said. “That’s the kind of player we had this season, a guy who amazes you at every turn.”
Roger Rubin returned to Newsday in 2018 to write about high schools, colleges and baseball following 20 years at the Daily News. A Baseball Hall of Fame voter since 2011, he has covered 13 MLB postseasons and 14 NCAA Final Fours.
