By Dan Weber
NKyTribune sports reporter
At a rangy 6-foot-2 and 186 pounds, Ryle High’s AJ Curry does not look like your average high school sophomore.
And as the author of a nine-page paper diagnosing his scientific approach to hitting a baseball, he neither sounds nor writes like a 16-year-old sophomore.
Or like most baseball players, including major-leaguers, for that matter.
“I just got bored one day and decided to write down my philosophy on what my swing should look like, of how I should hit various pitches,” AJ says, sounding like another San Diego native the Boone County transplant from Southern California seems to be heeding – Hall of Famer Ted Williams .
AJ Curry (Photo by Dan Weber/NKyTribune)
With a .628 batting average, more than 30 points higher than any other Kentucky schoolboy right now and the highest in Northern Kentucky in years, the sophomore his teammates call “Coach AJ,” is starting to hit it the way Hall of Famer Williams preached that good hitters should – with the benefit of science.
“The Science of Hitting” was Williams’ 96-page book considered the best ever written on the subject, published by the last MLB player to hit .400 — .406 in 1941 – and who retired after 19 All-Star seasons with a career batting average that seems beyond imagination today — .344. As Williams always preached, hitting was something that can be studied and perfected.
“He’s definitely a student of the game,” Ryle baseball coach Joe Aylor says of his star pupil. But the first time he saw Curry, “I could tell he was kind of athletic,” Aylor says, “but I thought he was a basketball player.”
Nope, he’s a typical 12-months-a-year Southern California baseball player. “I’d never had a break from baseball,” Curry says, until his move to Kentucky. “Then it started snowing, I’d never even seen snow.”
And then AJ got his first break from baseball. “I broke my ankle when I slipped on a curb in the snow and missed six weeks.” And then he started hitting again off the pitching machine in his basement. Yeah, not a surprise there.
“He’s still adjusting to the grass and the weather,” Aylor says.
Williams, who stood 6-3 and weighed 205, and Curry both hit from the left side of the plate, although Curry, whose velocity has improved from 80 mph to 88 the past year, also throws from the southpaw side when he’s not playing in the outfield. And he plans to do both for as long as he can, although with no plans to be the next Shohei Ohtani .
Just to take this baseball thing as far as he can.
Aiyana Curry (Photo provided)
His dad was a college basketball player so that wasn’t where his baseball focus came from, he says. No, it was his sister, Aiyana , three years older and now a softball player at Creighton University, who inspired him. Back home, at Mira Mesa High School in San Diego, she was the first girl to play on the baseball team with the boys.
“She pushed me to get better,” AJ says, “I couldn’t let my sister show me up.”
Get better he did. As a freshman at private Francis Parker High School in San Diego, he hit .271, which isn’t bad for a freshman going against some of the best high school baseball programs in the nation in Southern California, although AJ wasn’t pleased.
“After the season ended, I started to work out every day,” AJ says. And continued his work with his hitting mentors like former major leaguers Reggie Smith , Kevin Mitchell and ex-Red George Foster . And he’s gotten special work with his “dad’s best friend” Quinn Mayfield , who has extensive college experience.
He’s also met the person whose swing he emulates, Ken Griffey Jr. “I told him that and he told me to keep working,” AJ says.
AJ also keeps watching. “I only watch the college guys,” he says of televised baseball. “I think the college players play the game the way it’s supposed to be played.”
His goal, now that the colleges are starting to notice him – and a couple of MLB scouts as well – is to go to college. “College is your core place in life,” he says of preferring school over signing a baseball contract after high school should the opportunity come along.
But until then, he’ll keep helping his coach the way he did the other day. “I was trying to figure out a kid’s swing,” Aylor says, “and couldn’t decide whether it was his hands or his feet that were the issue.”
Then AJ walked by and said, “It’s his hands.” And when they started going with that, Aylor could see the improvement. That’s why his teammates, on a 20-9 Ryle team, second only to Covington Catholic’s 25-2 in the Ninth Region, call their leadoff hitter “Coach.”
He’s scored a team-high 30 runs with a team-high 29 RBI, a team-high 25 walks and 12 steals in 14 attempts.
That’s on top of AJ’s eye-popping 54 hits in 86 at-bats with 16 doubles and four home runs, “He doesn’t go up to hit a home run every time,” Aylor says, “just to hit it hard. He’s very fluid with a very smooth swing. His bat stays in the zone and he squares the ball up . . . he does a good job . . . he’s got a good eye.”
And he’s earned that .628 batting average – 31 points higher than the next in line in Kentucky against as good a schedule as Ryle can play against the likes of Louisville Trinity, Cincinnati Moeller, Covington Catholic, Beechwood twice, Highlands, Madison Central, Lexington’s Frederick Douglass and all their Boone County rivals.
This summer AJ will play on a travel team out West, Aylor says. But not just the typical travel team but “a national travel team,” he says, “that will play all over the West, the Southwest and in Florida.”
And will allow AJ to challenge himself and test his theories. Here’s just one of them, a paragraph from a recent LINK interview, where AJ talked about “some adjustments to my bat path. I’m staying more linear through the zone instead of rotational. I’m also trying not to kill the ball every time. I used to always hit the ball as hard as I could, and I’d hit ground balls and flyouts. Now I’m concentrating more on barreling up and finding the gaps.”
We showed that quote to Florence Y’alls Manager Chad Rhoades and he guessed it was from “at least a college guy, somebody in their 20s.” Top Y’alls’ hitter/hitting instructor Craig Massey said: “He’s definitely got it. It’s all about the swing plane. You don’t have to hit it that hard.”
You just have to hit it. And until high school pitchers master the splitter (split-fingered fastball), AJ should be in good shape.
“I’ve definitely got to work on that pitch,” he says. “Every time I see a splitter (not that any high school pitcher has mastered the pitch), I can’t hit it.”
But he’s working on it. And thinking about it. Not that there was ever any doubt.
Contact Dan Weber at dweber3440@aol.com . Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @dweber3440.
The post A sweet-swinging ‘student of the game,’ Ryle’s AJ Curry tops all Kentucky high school hitters appeared first on NKyTribune .
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