EL’s Rory Flynn has learned how to be a smart pitcher.
By Randy Whitehouse
Staff Writer

AUBURN – As a freshman, Rory Flynn was like a lot of young high school pitchers.

Fresh off of Little League and middle school baseball, Flynn thought he could continue to blow hitters away at will. He didn’t think he’d have to worry about hitters making contact, because up to that point, they rarely did.

But as brash young fireballers so often find out not long after they put on a high school uniform, Flynn had a lot to learn.

“I had to do a lot of work learning how to really pitch,” said Flynn, who opens his senior season later today when he takes the mound in Edward Little’s SMAA season opener against Cheverus. “I mean, as a freshman, I could throw alright velocity-wise, but I really didn’t know how to pitch. I just came in and threw the ball.”

Four years later, Flynn can still occasionally throw the ball by opposing hitters. But he’s also become a perfect example of how high school pitchers need to mature, physically and mentally, and develop their pitching IQ to be successful.

“More than anything, I want to make batters hit my pitch this year,” Flynn said. “It used to be that I’d have to throw the fastball for a strike and now I’m I feel like I can throw any pitch in pretty much any circumstance.”

“You never want to abandon being a power pitcher, but last season and in the fall I learned how to pitch more,” he added.

“Over the years we’ve seen him go from having a lot of good stuff to really developing as a pitcher,” EL coach Scott Annear said. “He’s not trying to make great pitches to get people to strike out. He’s trying to make great pitches so that if they make contact they’re not driving the ball into the gap.

“We talk about getting ahead and hitting his spots. And he’s worked so hard that he knows his mechanics well enough so when he’s missing those spots, he knows how to make the adjustment. He’s really good at self-correcting.”

Self-correction and self-control are two key reasons why Annear thinks Flynn is poised for a strong senior season. Always a fiery competitor on the mound, he’s less apt to let a bad pitch or an error get to him.

“He’s always had all of this energy and all of this intensity and it’s always been a matter of getting him to channel it in the right way at the right time and not let the emotion run wild,” said Annear.

“I definitely have learned about controlling myself a little bit better and bottling that energy to work for me rather than against me,” Flynn said.

It’s taken awhile for him to develop this maturity, he said. He benefited from the guidance of his coaches and upper-classmen who have taken him under their wing since he was a freshman. He’s also learned from taking his knocks on the mound, and from dealing with frustrations that arise even when he was pitching well.

The turning point may have come last year, in a game that was fairly typical of Flynn’s, and the Eddies’, hard-luck season. In a game at Hadlock Field against defending state champion Deering, Flynn put forth perhaps his best effort of the year, holding the Rams to just two runs while scattering six hits. Such a performance would normally have put the Eddies in prime position to knock off one of the top teams in the state. But Ryan Reid, Deering’s pitcher, threw a no-hitter that night.

Instead of letting his frustration consume him, Flynn looked at the game as another step towards becoming the pitcher he wants to be.

“We talked about taking the positives out of that game,” Annear said. “We told him ‘they had to beat you with a no-hitter.’ That says a lot. He walked away from that saying, ‘Look, I can compete against these guys.'”

Flynn finished 2-4 last year, but led the team in starts, innings, strike outs and complete games. He hopes to help the Eddies, with much of their nucleus returning, contend with the likes of Deering and defending state champion Sanford.

“I think we’ve got a chance. We’ve got the basics down this year,” said Flynn, who has hopes of playing for the University of Southern Maine next year. “We’ve got all but four seniors on the team, so we’ve been a long way and we definitely want to make a big impact this year.”

Their ace has come a long way, too. Chances are at some point this season, Flynn will go head-to-head with some wide-eyed freshman, someone who might remind him of what he was like a long, long time ago.

“A long time ago, I was one of those pitchers,” he said. “These past few years, I’ve been getting used to varsity baseball and I think I’m finally there this year.”

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