Around the Horn baseball column: A brief history of the North Shore's Kings of the K

Jun. 1—Historically speaking, it's more likely that the pitcher you're watching on the high school diamond will reach the Major Leagues than it is that he'll strike out 100 batters in a season.

Sounds crazy, right? About 1-in-200 (or half of one percent) of high school seniors in the entire country make the big leagues. But as far as we can tell, it's true.

The last two pitchers with North Shore ties to make the Majors never fanned 100: Beverly's Jack Leathersich punched out 78 as a senior in 2008 and Lynn English's Ben Bowden fanned 84 and 82 in his last two seasons as a Bulldog (2012-13).

An admittedly incomplete review of high school baseball in The Salem News readership area has, thus far, found five players that have been confirmed to have struck out 100 batters in a season. Barring an act of Congress, that club will grow by one next week when Danvers High plays its first Division 2 playoff game.

Junior lefthander Joe Zamejtis sits at 97 strikeouts for 2022, having broken Bobby Dean's Falcon single season record of 92 from the 2008 season last week. He would be the first player to fan 100 in the immediate area since 2014 and, possibly, the first lefthander ever.

Even though baseball is widely viewed as a statistician's dream game, high school records are almost non-existent. The milestones such as 1,000 points in basketball, 100 points in hockey or 1,000 yards in football just haven't been kept; there are no banners in local gyms for baseball stats.

The lack of records continues on a state level — did Hall of Famer Tom Glavine strike out more batters at Billerica than former Red Sox Manny Delcarmen did at West Roxbury? It would be cool to know, but no one does.

Locally, this scribe began keeping detailed baseball stats around 2009. With all-star write-ups and All-Decade teams, we're not likely missing any 100-strikeout pitchers from the 21st century. In the 1990's we may be missing a few and, considering how many innings guys threw back then, I'm almost certain the list is missing a fair number of hurlers from the 70's and 80's.

The current list is, of course, headlined by the all-time King of K's Jeff Juden of Salem. Never mind 100, he struck out over 200 batters in 1989. Next is the "other" Jeff, Jeff Allison of Peabody, with 142 K's in 2003 plus 128 in his junior year. Peabody's Pat Ruotolo also did it twice, fanning 130 as a junior in 2012 and 102 as a sophomore in 2011.

Essex Tech flamethrower Mike Mitchell struck out 112 in 2014, the last local hurler to hit triple digits. St. Mary's Lynn's dynamic ace, Aiven Cabral, has remarkably struck out 100-plus in each of the last two seasons. He's off to Northeastern next year and is a sure bet to play professionally at some level one day.

There are a lot of ways to engineer a strikeout. Juden and his 6-foot-7, future big league frame was overpowering and intimidating. Allison, touching well over 90 miles an hour regularly, was too. You basically had to start swinging when either Jeff had his hand by his ear and pray. The same could be said of Gloucester legend Rusty Tucker who almost certainly had 100-plus K's in '97 or '98.

Ruotolo had a heavy fastball but did it more with location, living on the black of the plate in a ridiculously impressive fashion.

How does Zamejtis mow down the competition? He's not as overpowering as his 100-K predecessors, typically living in the mid-80's for velocity. He can change speeds when he wants to, but most of his whiffs don't come when hitters are fooled and swing early on a curve (Peabody's Justin Powers is the best at pulling the string this season).

Instead, Zamejtis has success attacking hitters. He's one of the most competitive pitchers we've seen in years, treating every at-bat like a meaningful battle. He's not afraid to go deep into counts and never gives any plate appearance away.

He can deploy four pitches with equal accuracy in any count and because he's a southpaw, Zamejtis works both sides of the plate with confidence against both left- and right-handed hitters.

Moving in and out between the sides of the plate gives him what some coaches call an "effective wildness"; meaning that batters can never, ever, truly be comfortable in the box.

His 97 strikeouts have come over 55 2/3 innings in eight starts. He's reached double digit strikeouts in seven of those eight starts with an earned run average of 1.67, 26 walks and 1.16 runners on base per inning (WHIP). Opposing batters hit a mere .176 against Zamejtis, who is adept at bearing down with runners on base behind him.

Even getting to 90 K's in a season is rare. Masconomet's Speros Varinos hit 99 in 2013 and Ipswich's Matt Small struck out 96 in 2006. Spencer Brown of Beverly (2018) and Austen Michel (2014) of Hamilton-Wenham both struck out 93 and Danvers' Dean are the only other confirmed righthanded 90-plus strikeout guys so far.

Among lefthanders, its two players: Zamejtis and Peabody's Mike Proto, who struck out 94 as a junior (throwing to future Red Sox draft pick Steve Lomasney) and had 328 in his career.

This is where the history starts to get sticky. Any list of the great lefthanders in North Shore history has to include Salem's Doug Canney, but how many K's did he have? Stephen Peterson of St. John's Prep is one of the best modern southpaws and his high-water mark was 87 while pitching the Eagles to the '06 state final.

Beverly High Hall of Famer Chris Peters may have struck out 100 in 1986. He had 18 in one game, a 12-inning classic against Swampscott in which Dave Howell struck out 21 and both aces went the distance. How about the Big Blue's storied baseball history? Tim Kiely didn't reach 100 in the records we looked at pitching in the early 2000's, but there were no numbers listed anywhere for all-time great hurlers like Brendan Nolan and Kevin Rogers, so its certainly possible one of them belongs on the list.

Marblehead Hall of Famer Doug Gatchell was another suggestion, especially since he led the country in strikeout-to-walk ratio at Salem State. As we know, future success doesn't always mean 100-strikeouts at the high school level ... but its a decent bet.

Pat Connaughton of St. John's Prep, who'd almost certainly be in the Majors if he hadn't decided to play pro basketball, had a career-high of 86 in 2011.

If there are fans, family members or supporters out there who believe the know of a 100-strikeout season, please let us know via e-mail at MWilliams@salemnews.com or via Twitter @MattWilliams_SN. We'll do our best to look up any names via newspaper archives, but if you happen to have Hall of Fame bio's, newspaper clippings or All-Scholastic write-ups with the numbers to include, that would be ever better.

Since high school record keeping, especially from the decades before computers came along, can be so haphazard (hat tip to Danvers' former coach Roger Day for his meticulous record keeping) its hard to know exactly how rare it is to see a pitcher strike out 100 men.

But we know that its pretty rare. So when Zamejtis does it next week, he deserves a big-time ovation whenever he walks off the mound. — It's not inconceivable that Swampscott's Pierce Friedman could reach 100 if the Big Blue make a deep playoff run. He's at 75 now and is averaging 11-12 per start in the month of May. If he gets two starts, 25 K's is not out of the question. — Solid season by Essex Tech and coach Jed Beauparlant. The Hawks would've been tournament bound with a few breaks along the way, finishing two games out at 7-11. Unfortunately, they're up in Division 3 where the power rankings aren't typically kind to the Commonwealth Athletic Conference ... if they were in D4, they're a surefire tourney squad.

Senior Jaden Dussault was Essex Techs unsung hero all year and the team's emotional leader. He was a phenomenal center field, robbing the opposition of runs by tracking down difficult balls all year long.

Senior Josh Berube came out for the team for the first time and wound up leading the Hawks in RBI 15 while batting .356. He was also excellent defensively with only four errors at the hot corner.

The team's only returning starters were Jacob Wells, Jeff Roach, Harry Lynch and Dussault and they were all excellent leaders as the Hawks built experience.

Freshman Jack Tsoustouras and Cole Waterman both made huge strides. A midseason call-up, Waterman broke the school record for triples in a season by hitting four three-baggers in 26 at-bats (the previous record of three was shared by Jesse Fraser from 2004 and current assistant coach Jackson Leete from 2017). Essex Tech's nine total triples were the second most in team history (the 2003 team bagged 11). — Keep an eye out for state tournament pairings released by the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association sometime on Wednesday. Game times may not be posted until Thursday with preliminary round games beginning on Friday or Saturday. — Around the Horn, a column on North Shore high school baseball, appears in The Salem News each Wednesday during the spring season. Contact Matt Williams at MWilliams@salemnews.com and follow along on Twitter @MattWilliams_SN #StrikeOutALS