AUBURN – Aaron Easton learned so much about pitching in just a little more than two months he spent in Florida last summer that he literally couldn’t wait to get home to spread the knowledge to others.

After a long day of instruction under the hot sun in Jupiter, Fla., Waterford’s Easton, a 29th-round selection of the Florida Marlins in last June’s Major League Baseball Draft, would sometimes call his father, Chris, a Babe Ruth coach, to offer him some of the tips he had learned working out with the Rookie League Gulf Coast Marlins.

“I learned so much in just the short time that I was down there, it’s amazing,” he said. “It’s just little things that make sense that make a world of difference.”

Earlier this week, Easton imparted some of that wisdom to some local youngsters during a clinic at The Winning Edge. The 6-foot-10 right-hander is doing some of his off-season work at the Washington St. baseball/softball center and agreed to help out some of its other clients.

“He’s a really down-to-earth guy,” said Zack Timmermeyer, a senior pitcher for Lewiston High School who worked with Easton for an hour. “I thought he was going to come in here a little cocky, but he came in here just like a best friend, saying I know exactly what you guys are going through, do this and this.”

Easton worked with Timmermeyer on mechanics during their session and gave him a lot of advice that will come in handy.

“With him being 6-10 and me being 6-4, we’ve had a lot of similar issues in high school like mechanics, so everything related perfectly,” said Timmermeyer.

“The more you know,” Easton said, “at an earlier age, especially with pitching, which is so based on mechanics, the more consistent your delivery will be, the less prone to injury you’ll be, the better baseball player you’ll be.”

He added that working with the kids, even on the most fundamental aspects of pitching, can be beneficial for him, too.

“If I can explain it to these guys, it just reinforces it to me. So I become a better pitcher by telling the kids these things,” he said.

Easton returned to Maine shortly after the Gulf Coast League season wrapped up at the end of August, but his work was far from over. Like his teammates, Easton met with an organizational strength and conditioning coach to develop an off-season program that will prepare him for next spring training.

“They told me to shut my arm down for a month right when I got back,” he said. “Don’t pick up a baseball, don’t really lift, run if you want to. Then October rolled around and I started throwing a little bit. That’s when you’re working back into it, trying to be game-ready by the time you step on the field for spring training, because if you don’t show up in shape and ready to go, your job is in jeopardy.”

He said he has stayed faithful to the strength and conditioning program, and checks in regularly with his strength coach and the scout who signed him last summer. Currently, he’s throwing two or three times a week and doing some occasional long-tossing to begin building his arm back up. By January, he’ll be throwing a couple of bullpen sessions a week to gear up for the first week of March when he’ll report back to Florida for spring training.

“I’ve never been to spring training, so that will be a new step,” he said. “But I’ll definitely go in with a lot more confidence knowing that I spent a whole winter preparing to play. It’s not like I haven’t prepared in the past, but it’s a whole different mindset.

“It’s great having a place like this to do that. I love it. I have a nice place to work out indoors when it gets really cold and nasty out,” he added. “It’s nice to be able to come in and be able to throw off a mound and work on some stuff.”

Easton appeared in 13 games last season, all in relief. He was 2-6 with a 5.19 ERA, but he allowed just 49 hits (including just one home run) in 52.2 innings pitched. He struck out 32 while walking 19.

The Oxford Hills High School graduate doesn’t know where the Marlins will assign him next season. He hopes an off-season of hard work and a good spring training will help him climb further up the Marlins’ organizational ladder.

“They’ll put me wherever they think I need to be,” Easton said while wearing an Albuquerque Isotopes cap, from the Marlins’ Triple-A affiliate. “We had a guy I played with in rookie ball, a closer, who got sent up to Triple-A for two-and-a-half weeks because they needed to fill a spot. So you never know what’s going to happen. You just always have to prepare to move.

“You want to be as high as you can go,” he added, “but as long as I’m playing baseball, I’ll be happy.”