The biggest decision of Justin Bellinger’s life will present itself in just over a month, and the 6-foot-6, 240-pound power hitter from Weston, Mass., has explored every avenue to give himself the best options.
College or pro? Duke University or a low-level minor-league affiliate? (St. Louis Cardinals http://espn.go.com/blog/boston/high-school/post/_/id/32658/st-sebastians-bellinger-drafted-by-cardinals)
Bellinger spent hours upon hours in the batting cage last winter with his own personal hitting coach, Oliver Marmol, who also is the manager of a Single-A affiliate for the St. Louis Cardinals. The Bellinger family moved Marmol and his wife up to the Boston area for the past two winters in preparation for this year’s draft.
Marmol didn’t concern himself with adding power to Bellinger’s swing. Power has never been the problem. That much has been evident since Bellinger hit a baseball 400 feet as a 12-year-old playing in Cooperstown, N.Y. Also that summer, playing for five different teams, Bellinger estimates he hit 100 home runs in 162 games.
Marmol and Bellinger spent time together last offseason working on the hitter’s ability to read pitches. Bellinger wore strobe glasses in the cage, struggling to identify 85- to 90-mph pitches with 60 percent of his vision blocked. He worked on driving the ball to all fields and shortening his swing so that it resembles that of a player closer to 6 feet tall. The work seemed endless and tedious, but Bellinger wanted to leave no stone unturned in his quest to refine his game.
The retelling of Bellinger’s development as one of New England’s top pro prospects can, at times, sound like a science experiment. Justin is the son of two former Division 1 athletes at Northeastern. His father, David, played football in the NFL for a short stint during the strike season of 1987. Justin’s mother, Lisa, remains a competitive runner with Boston Marathon experience.
When Justin started playing Little League T-ball in Weston, his coaches found he was blessed with some natural baseball gifts. He was left-handed, he could crush a baseball off the tee, and he could pitch with velocity. At 12, he learned for the first time what it was like to outgrow the competition. He hit home runs seemingly every game, and rarely allowed a hit as a pitcher.
Recognizing his son needed a bigger stage on which to perform, David Bellinger, who owned a manufacturing company, secured a tryout for Justin with a travel team based out of Maryland.
“Every weekend, we’d go down there on an airplane and he’d play with the Maryland Cardinals,” David Bellinger said. “I wanted to see how he compared with Mid-Atlantic players.”
Justin compared favorably, and in future seasons, the trips became longer in mileage, but more frequent. He played on AAU teams, travel teams and in the most prestigious invitational tournaments all over the country. The Bellingers bought a home in Jupiter, Fla., so that Justin could play on travel teams in Florida during the summer. David Bellinger connected his son with a personal trainer, Mike Perry, of Strength of Skill out of Chelmsford, Mass.
By the summer after his eighth-grade season, Bellinger was being recruited by a host of Division 1 schools. He gave a verbal commitment to Vanderbilt, although last August, he signed papers with Duke University. He also quit wrestling — a sport in which he had lost only one match from the start of his career through eighth grade.
“People say it’s difficult to evaluate players from Massachusetts because they’re not playing against the top competition,” Bellinger said. “I rarely play any baseball in Massachusetts outside of high school. Some people say a New England kid won’t get the at-bats against the top arms. I’ve been playing against the top kids in the country — traveling everywhere — for six or seven years.”
This is when it can start to feel as if Bellinger has been created in a baseball lab. He travels to seemingly every big showcase — the Area Code Games, Perfect Game national events, WWBA World Championship events — to compete against the best. He spends 10 hours a week with a physical trainer and another 10 with a hitting instructor — a professional baseball manager whom his parents paid to move from Jupiter, Fla., to the Boston area each of the past two winters.
“I wouldn’t have moved if I didn’t think this kid is special,” Marmol said. “I live in paradise in Jupiter, and I went to Boston for two straight cold winters. This is a kid who I think will play this game for a long time. He loves to play, he loves to learn, and he’s still raw and developing.”
Here comes some more numbers. Last spring at St. Sebastian’s, Bellinger hit .396 with eight home runs and 36 RBI in 53 at-bats. He had a .736 OBP and 1.698 OPS. He was the lone player in the ISL to use a wood bat. This year, he has downsized to a 34-inch, 31-ounce maple Max Bat. Again, power never has been the issue.
Bellinger wears custom-made XXXL batting gloves, and he also can throw 90 mph from the left side off the mound. At a Power Showcase Home Run Derby in 2012 at Chase Field, Bellinger hit a ball farther than any other competitor from around the globe — 477 feet. This winter, he was named to the Perfect Game Dream Team as well as the Best Hitter for Power in the Northeast Region.
“I don’t pay attention to that at all,” Bellinger said. “Perfect Game makes you pay money to look at that stuff, and I don’t do that. It doesn’t matter. I’m not a big believer in ranking kids.”
Baseball can be a funny sport, in that superstar players at 12 rarely are still superstar players at the college level. Little League ends, and somewhere along the way, the superstar player loses his love for the game. Or he stops growing. Or he stops working. Or his parents push too hard. So many things can get in the way of a superstar player finding his way to the highest level.
Source: http://www.baseballjournal.com/news/players/recruiting/Justin_Bellinger_St._Sebastian_power_hitter
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