Baseball Player of the Year: Griffin Sleyko completed the job, pitched Oswego East to first sectional title

Griffin Sleyko’s first time throwing a baseball this spring did not exactly provide a sign of the good things to come.

He threw a 30-pitch bullpen at Oswego East tryouts. Twenty-nine were balls.

“That’s not even a joke, one of the worst bullpens of my life,” Sleyko said. “It’s like ‘Uh-oh, is this the person who is supposed to be our No. 1?’”

Sleyko can laugh about it now, just like he can his first start of the season when he made three errors, throwing two balls away on a cold, rainy March day. As a senior, he went on to pitch this Oswego East baseball team into the record books.

Sleyko threw a complete game to beat Waubonsie Valley to win Oswego East’s first regional championship. A week later, he tossed a nine-inning complete game to beat Oswego 2-1 in a sectional final, capping off the greatest season in Wolves’ baseball history.

He is the Record Newspapers Player of the Year.

“Really happy with the season,” Sleyko said. “Obviously we wanted to win a state championship, but there is nothing to complain about. We set history, we set records. I could be more happy, but I couldn’t be more happy.”

Oswego East coach Brian Schaeffer couldn’t have asked for more from his lanky right-hander. Sleyko posted a 7-4 record with a 1.56 ERA and 71 strikeouts over 62 2/3 innings. The most impressive stat? Of Sleyko’s 10 starts, nine were complete games, including his two biggest.

“His ability to be efficient, throw strikes and keep guys off balance was something he did really well last year and this year,” Schaeffer said. “He got ahead in counts early, he had a lot of 10-pitch innings. Yeah, he had a lot of strikeouts but he had a lot of ground balls too. That was a different mentality from last year. He just said I’m going to not just throw, I’m going to pitch.”

Sleyko doesn’t have a blow-it-by-you fastball, but he was efficient by attacking hitters and commanding offspeed pitches with tremendous movement.

And he stuck to a routine.

That started with Chick-fil-A before every game: a water, 12 grilled nuggets and a deluxe chicken filet.

“Swear to you before every game, finished it at 9:30 or 10 a.m. before every playoff start, I had to scarf it down,” Sleyko said. “I had a warmup I stuck to, I would run a lot, ran a lot after my starts, sticking to a routine helped to improve my longevity.”

Sleyko is an open book in admitting that he barely threw in the offseason with the expectation that he would not play college ball, and that his arm was hurting at the beginning of the year. He took a week off before a regular-season start at Oswego, another complete-game win.

“I told myself I wasn’t planning on playing college ball next season so I wanted to leave it out on the field,” Sleyko said. “I did everything I could to win, whatever it took. I threw through some pain, popped some Advil, found some new pitcher tools to make things work. Good things happen.”

As much as anything, Sleyko went into the season with the mentality that he was going to have as much fun as possible.

He is an intense competitor who visualizes certain plays and pitch scenarios in his mind days before his starts. But he doesn’t let it get in the way of a good time.

“I get so locked into the game, but I can’t let that get to me physically,” Sleyko said. “Before the games, I try to stay loose. Even when I’m on the mound, I’m laughing and having fun. I feel if you’re not having fun playing baseball you’re not doing something right.”

That relaxed, yet focused mindset on every pitch served Sleyko well in the sectional final win over Oswego, a game he said “I knew I would win, had no doubt.”

“He is one of those kids that is playful, loves to talk, interact with anybody, keeps the levity up, but when he steps on that mound he is a true competitor, through and through,” Schaeffer said. “That other part, having fun, this year more than any year I think he found his ability to have fun while playing.”

Sleyko plans to major in cyber security with a minor in business next year at Miami of Ohio. He worries that he might regret not playing in college, and is going to try to walk on with the baseball team.

If he has thrown his last pitch, it was a memorable one.

“We got to that seventh inning against Oswego, he was in the high 70s pitches. I said to him ‘this is a lot on your arm, I can get up a reliever up.’ I have never seen someone that emphatic, that I’m going to pitch,” Schaeffer said. “That shows the testament of the kind of competitor he is. He wanted that sectional championship. The rest of the team seeing that was huge. Griffin is a different type of leader.”