Sports

Aquebogue man is Long Island Ducks’ new right fielder

This season marks Bryan Sabatella's 11th as an independent league baseball player. (Credit: Grant Parpan)
This season marks Bryan Sabatella’s 11th as an independent league baseball player. (Credit: Grant Parpan)

An Independent Ballplayer 

Continuing on a trajectory he established in high school, Sabatella showed improvement in each of his three seasons at Quinnipiac University. Statistically, his numbers jumped each year in virtually every category.

His freshman season batting average of .299 climbed to .355 in his sophomore campaign and .406 in his junior year. After slugging just eight extra base hits as a freshman, he clubbed 26 as a junior, a season that saw his Bobcats team win the Northeast Conference and reach the regionals of the College World Series.

If there was an area where Sabatella could get better, he did — and the scouts took notice.

The Seattle Mariners selected the 20-year-old in the ninth round — 263rd out of 1,501 draftees — of the 2005 MLB Draft. That’s three rounds earlier that year than future major leaguers Craig Stammen of the Washington Nationals and Matt Joyce of the Los Angeles Angels, and three rounds after the Mariners took future All-Star starting pitcher Lance Lynn. It’s the second highest draft pick ever used on a Shoreham-Wading River graduate, behind only the San Francisco Giants’ fifth-round selection of Julio Vega in 1990.

Shortly after he was drafted, Sabatella was assigned to the Mariners lowest Class A affiliate, the Everett Aqua Sox of the Northwest League. He played 53 games that season, batting .249 with four home runs and seven stolen bases, while playing alongside future big leaguers Luis Valbuena of the Houston Astros and Michael Saunders of the Toronto Blue Jays.

It was a whole new world for the young ballplayer and, for the first time in his baseball life, he found himself struggling on the ballfield.

“When you play for a Major League club they’re going to tinker with you,” he said, saying the Mariners wanted him to adjust his swing. “They see you as a certain type of player and they want to mold you into that player.”

In 63 games the following season, Sabatella raised his average to .263 in Everett before being promoted to the Mariners’ Class A team in Wisconsin. He struggled with the Timber Rattlers, batting just .199 with 36 strikeouts in 176 at-bats at the higher level.

He was among a handful of players and coaches released by the organization at the end of the 2006 season.

“It just didn’t work out,” he said. “There’s a reason only a small amount of guys get to play in the Major Leagues.”

Coach Mignano says more than a dozen of his former players have gone on to play professionally in the minor leagues. A reason many of them are able to have longer careers is through the expansion of independent baseball leagues. These teams, with no affiliation to any major league ballclub, are free to sign any available free agent. Some of them are players who had a taste of Major League Baseball — or got very close — and are looking to make their way back. Then there are those like Sabatella, who never experienced life in “The Show,” but aren’t quite ready to stop playing the game they love.

Sabatella has since played for six different independent teams in nine years, batting .315 in an indy career that’s seen him step up to the plate nearly 3,500 times in cities like Shreveport, La., and Kansas City, Kan. He’s stolen 40 or more bases three times in independent baseball and won two championships.

His first taste of independent baseball came with the Alexandria (La.)Aces of the United League, where he hoped maybe he could work his way back into an organization, but didn’t know exactly what to expect. What he found was a new type of challenge.

“It’s a different kind of grind, but it’s still a grind,” Sabatella said.

One advantage to playing with Alexandria was that suddenly he could absorb knowledge from veteran players. He was no longer just playing with people his own age.

As a 21-year-old in the Mariners system, his oldest teammate was 24 and none had ever played at the big league level.

The following season with the Aces, he was playing with eight players who had reached AAA and five in their 30s.

“These guys taught me things I couldn’t learn from playing with players my own age,” he said.

In 10 seasons of independent league baseball, Sabatella has played with nearly a dozen one-time big league players, including former prospects Matt LeCroy, D’Angelo Jimenez, Joey Gathright, Angel Berroa and current teammates Lew Ford and Prentice Redman.

Sabatella’s most recent stop was with the Kansas City T-Bones. At the end of the 2014 season, his manager asked about his future. Sabatella told him it was time to put his college degree to use and the team granted his release.

Having given lessons to young ballplayers throughout his minor league career, he figured he might get into coaching, most likely at the college level. He currently coaches at All Pro Sports Fieldhouse in East Setauket. If coaching didn’t pan out, he might consider working in business, maybe in New York City.

Then that all got put on hold.