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Gavin Cecchini Continues Hot Hitting in Brooklyn

By Joe D.

August 18, 2013 No comments

gavin-cecchini

Update 8/18 by Satish Ram

I give Gavin Cecchini a lot of hell because of where he was drafted…but at the end of the day, he’s a teenager playing in a college league — to my knowledge, he’s two years younger than the average player. I’m very pleased to see his bat springing to life now and he’s becoming more comfortable in the NYPL for sure. Last night, Cecch had a career night when he banged out four hits. He might be a singles machine recently, but he’s batting .419/.439/.484 over his recent 15-game hitting streak. His overall average now stands at .311.

Original Post

At just 19-years old, shortstop Gavin Cecchini is now beginning to deliver on some of the potential some that led the Mets to select him with their top pick (12th overall) in the 2012 First Year Play Draft.

Last night for the Brooklyn Cyclones, Cecchini went 1-for-4 with walk to extend his hitting streak to 14 straight games. During that span, the Louisiana native is batting .379/.403/.448 and overall for the season he’s at .289/.321/.344 with seven doubles, 12 runs scored and 10 RBI in 128 at-bats for the ‘Clones.

Jim Mancari, who covers the Cyclones for MMO, spoke to Cecchini after the game. “I’m not really worried about the hit streak,” Cecchini said. “I’m just taking good swings, getting my pitch and helping the team win. That’s all the matters.”

An ankle injury knocked Cecchini out for a couple of weeks and also took a toll on his numbers, but that is now behind him and he’s playing as confidently and aggressively as we’ve seen him all season long.

Cecchini has teamed up with second baseman L.J. Mazzilli to give the Cyclones a potent combination in the middle of the diamond as the two of them excel both on defense and offense. Mazzilli has an .845 OPS over his last ten games, while Cecchini has an .880 OPS in that same span.

During a critical at-bat a couple of games ago, Cecchini came up big with an RBI-single and eventually scored the winning run.

“Whenever you have two strikes and runners in scoring position, you at least want to put the ball in play, and that’s what we did tonight,” Cecchini said. “We made them play, and we came out with a win.”

We spoke to Donnelly after the game who added, “That was a heck of an at-bat…two strikes…if he (Cecchini) strikes out there, we’re in trouble,” the Cyclones’ manager said. “He hit the ball solid and drove in the tying run. That was a great at-bat by a young kid.”

Things are looking up for the youngster and there’s a good chance that he may skip past Savannah and begin the year at Advanced-A St. Lucie from what I’m hearing.

Thoughts from Matt M.

It’s been wonderful for Cecchini to experience this recent hot streak. This is really the first time he’s enjoyed this kind of success since being drafted by New York last June. Prior to his ankle injury in July, he had streaks of solid play, but wasn’t able to string a few games of that together. He returned to the lineup at the end of the month and struggled for about a week before going off against opposing pitchers.

I’m happy he’s been able to team up with Mazzilli up the middle, as I think his experience at UConn can do a lot of good for his relationship with Cecchini. Brandon Nimmo has also picked things up with the bat of late after a rough couple months, so all-in-all, the recent top draft picks of the Mets are having a good finish to their respective seasons.