University of North Carolina Athletics
GoHeels Exclusive: Power Personified
June 10, 2020 | Baseball, Featured Writers
By Pat James, GoHeels.com
Sitting in his office at his Rye Brook, New York home the evening of October 2, Ted Sabato's phone buzzed with a text from a friend, asking if he'd seen Barstool Sports' most recent tweet.
Perplexed, Sabato said he hadn't. But with some urging from his buddy, he opened Twitter and pulled up the popular and controversial website's account. What he saw left him shaking his head in disbelief, as his youngest son, Aaron Sabato, often makes him do.
There, in a video originally tweeted out by North Carolina baseball, was Aaron, using every bit of his 6-foot-2, 230-pound frame to launch a ball off a tee at home plate and into the Chapel Hill sky. The ball carried for what felt like minutes, just a minor byproduct of the video's slow-motion effect. Then, at last, it struck the Boshamer Stadium batter's eye, about 420 feet away.
Thousands had watched and shared the video by the time Ted saw it, the overwhelming majority of them shocked by the mammoth blast.
"Taking T-ball to a new level!" said one Twitter user.
"We are not worthy," replied another.
Unbeknownst to most, however, Aaron was just a few days removed from being cleared to hit off a tee after undergoing offseason shoulder surgery. Coming off the procedure, the first of his career, the sophomore slugger had expressed some uncertainty about getting his power back, his father said. But watching Aaron's latest feat, Ted knew that concern was quelled.
"I called him up and I'm like, 'You want to keep it low key. You aren't supposed to be there. Here you are hitting a ball 420 feet that went viral,'" said Ted, referencing the video, which has since been watched more than 184,000 times. "I was just shaking my head, like, 'Well, now it's out of the box.' That kind of amazed me."
It wasn't the first time Aaron impressed with his prodigious power, though.
As a prep star for Georgia-based 5 Star National, Aaron made a name for himself with his bat, recording the farthest-hit ball (419.3 feet) and the third hardest-hit ball (104.8 mph) at the 2017 WWBA World Championship. Ultimately, that proved to be just a glimpse of what was to come at UNC, where he's continued honing his power.
In 83 games for the Tar Heels, Aaron has slashed .332/.459/.698 with 25 home runs, including a Carolina freshman-record 18 in 2019. Among those were a 436-foot bomb against Notre Dame in March and a dinger against Duke last year that left his bat at 113.6 mph. Those numbers have been accompanied by a hard-hit rate (95 mph or higher exit velocity) of 53.2 percent, based off the 188 batted balls in play captured by UNC's data analytics team via TrackMan.
Now, six days removed from his 21st birthday, Aaron's potent bat has him poised to be picked as early as the first round of the MLB Draft, which begins Wednesday.
Aaron would be the first to say he doesn't label himself as solely a power hitter, as evidenced by his .343 freshman batting average. There's no denying, however, that his power – considered by Baseball America as the second best among college hitters in this draft class – sets him apart.
"With no indifference to the great players I've been able to coach at North Carolina, he's at another level in terms of right-handed power," coach Mike Fox said. "The video they shot that one day, I had nothing to do with that, but standing there watching as he hit the ball off the batter's eye with a tee at home plate, I didn't honestly think that was possible."
Then again, with Aaron Sabato at the plate, almost anything is.
'Born to hit'
Aaron was only 7 years old when he hit his first homer, a shot to right field that, at least in the mind of his New York Yankee-fan father, still conjures images of Mickey Mantle's famous 1963 blast that almost sailed out of Yankee Stadium.
Despite how hard and far he hit it, though, Aaron's home run almost wasn't.
Upon clearing the fence, the ball ricocheted off the top of a tree and back onto the field, which, according to Rye Brook Little League rules, should have been called a double. But once they processed what had happened, the umpire and Aaron's coach convened.
"They were like, 'We've never seen a ball hit like that,'" Aaron recalled. "'That was so far over the fence that we're giving you the home run.'"
The moment solidified what Ted, a former Mercy College baseball player, and his wife, Valerie, still an avid softball player, had long suspected: Aaron was born to hit.
Just as they did with his brother Teddy – a redshirt junior pitcher for Manhattan College who started his career at Carolina – Aaron's parents first put a bat in his hands around the age of 3. Quickly, they saw he had great hand-eye coordination. He also had some pop.
"Balls would just jump. I would always have games with Teddy and him and I would be amazed," Ted said. "We'd call him little Bamm-Bamm. I'd be like, 'Wow, that ball is still going.' Our yard was pretty big and whether it was 50 feet, 100 feet, it just carried, and he always had this knack to go opposite field."
Growing up, Aaron typically played up in age on Teddy's teams, alongside and against kids two or three years older. That, however, didn't keep him from mashing.
Often, Aaron said he'd hear people comment about the thunderous sound of his bat striking the ball. For the longest time, he struggled to grasp why they were so enamored with it; in some ways, he still does. But the older he got, the more he realized how unique his gift was.
Even then, Aaron admits he went through stretches, such as early in his career at the Brunswick School in Greenwich, Connecticut, where he wasn't tapping into his power as much as he felt he could. That fueled his work ethic, as he spent countless hours in the backyard batting cage his father built working to ensure he consistently got in a good position to hit.
"I knew (the power) was in there," Aaron said, "and sometimes there would be one ball out of a round that I would really crush and I would be like, 'OK, I need to find that and I need to be able to do that a lot and consistently.' I think that's what kept pushing me.'"
So did the pursuit of a dream.
Perhaps it was the colors that initially attracted both Aaron and Teddy to UNC. It might have even been the fact that their first cousin once removed, Meaghan Francella, played for the Tar Heel women's golf team, or that they grew up hearing their dad tell stories of playing against B.J. Surhoff. Most likely, it was because of their obsession with Carolina basketball. But no matter the reason, they made it their mission at an early age to attend UNC.
Aaron said that started to seem feasible for him once he began playing with 5 Star Baseball. It then became even more possible when the Tar Heels started recruiting Teddy.
Fox and associate head coach Scott Forbes knew Teddy had a younger brother when the former committed to Carolina in the summer of 2015, but they didn't know much about him, other than that he was a hitter. Over the next year, the UNC staff learned more about Aaron. Then, in June 2016, Forbes received a call from then-assistant coach Scott Jackson, who was at the Perfect Game Junior National Showcase in Fort Myers, Florida.
"He called me and said, 'Aaron Sabato just hit one out of the stadium,'" Forbes recalled. "'We probably need to offer him.'"
Shortly after, Aaron's phone rang.
"I sensed a few seconds into the call who it was," Ted said. "His face was so enlightened, with a smile bigger than I ever saw. He hung up the phone and he turned to me and said, 'I'm going to Carolina.'"
'Part of the process'
Ominous storm clouds loomed over Boshamer Stadium as Aaron grabbed his bat and helmet and walked toward home plate, the Tar Heels trailing UNC Wilmington, 6-5, heading into the bottom of the ninth in last year's Chapel Hill Regional opener.
Just a few hours earlier, UNC had led 3-0 and appeared primed to defeat the Seahawks. But as Aaron dug into the batter's box to lead off the inning, Carolina seemed on the precipice of falling into the loser's bracket.
Then, with one mighty swing of the bat, that changed.
Aaron took the first pitch he saw, a 92-mph fastball, and deposited it over the left-field fence. The 377-foot shot left his bat at 110 mph, according to UNC's analytics team. It also ended up propelling the Tar Heels to a 7-6 walk-off win.
"For him to do it in that fashion at that point in the game and that point of the season," said assistant coach Jesse Wierzbicki, "that was huge."
A year later, that remains by far Aaron's favorite homer of his Carolina career, as well as the signature moment from a season that saw him earn Collegiate Baseball Co-National Freshman of the Year and first-team All-America honors, among several other accolades.
His success, however, wasn't as easy as he often made it look.
Behind a superb fall and preseason in which he consistently sent balls over the fence, Aaron forced his way into the lineup as UNC's starting first baseman, kicking future first-round pick Michael Busch to left field. Aaron proceeded to carry his hot hitting into the opening series against Xavier, during which he went 4-for-10 with a homer. But it didn't last long.
Over his next 10 games, he batted 3-for-30 with 10 strikeouts compared to just two walks. With him clearly putting too much pressure on himself, Wierzbicki said the coaches debated sitting Aaron multiple games in a row before finally doing so in the first game of a doubleheader against Clemson, just to get him to relax.
"I think he had to kind of figure it out the hard way," Wierzbicki said. "If he doesn't learn how to take pitches, then he's pretty much going to get dominated because they're not ever going to throw him a pitch that he wants if they know that he's going to swing at a pitch that's not even in the strike zone. Early on, he did that, and I think that was a couple of things factoring together.
"He's young, he's anxious, he's trying to prove himself. But he figured out that he was going to have to learn how to spit on some pitches and take some pitches, even sometimes some strikes."
That might not have happened, though, without Busch.
Amid Aaron's slump, Busch pulled him aside and told him that in order to hit .300 in the ACC, he needed to learn how to take walks. As much as anything, that meant taking what the pitcher gave him instead of pressing.
"Guys throws good pitches, it's going to happen," Aaron said. "But you don't want to swing at the pitcher's best pitches; you're never going to do well. That's why these Major Leaguers, they don't miss mistakes. And for me, that's why I've gotten so good; I don't miss mistakes.
"Mistakes for me need to be put over the fence. That's why I shrunk my game into realizing, 'OK, he's going to make a mistake, and I know I'm good enough to hit those mistakes.'"
And he did, again and again.
Over the final 51 games of the season, Aaron batted .385 with 41 extra-base hits, including 17 homers. He also walked 33 times. Overall, he finished the year not only leading the team in batting average and homers but also hits (79), doubles (25), RBIs (63) and slugging percentage (.696), while his 1.149 OPS marked the third highest under Fox.
As astounding as those numbers were, the maturity Aaron displayed amid his early struggles made as much of a mark on Fox as anything.
"I've seen that happen to a number of young hitters and some can't pull themselves out," Fox said. "I've seen some who it's taken them their whole freshman year. So, you're thinking, 'OK, we know it's in there. It's part of the process. Failure is part of it. You're going to struggle in hitting. How mentally strong are you to not let it just continue to pull you down?' So, I certainly give credit to Aaron and to Coach Wierzbicki."
'In a good spot'
Eighteen games into this season, Aaron stood near Boshamer Stadium's home on-deck circle on March 11, the Tar Heels tied 2-all with VMI heading into the bottom of the seventh.
Days removed from opening ACC play with a home sweep at the hands of Notre Dame, Carolina could ill afford a loss to the four-win Keydets. Yet, there was UNC, then 11-7, hoping for someone – anyone – to provide a spark.
Moments later, Aaron did just that, driving a 1-1 pitch over the right-field wall. The one-out home run went 387 feet and left his bat at 106 mph, according to UNC's analytics team. It also turned out to be the first of two in a seven-run inning for the Tar Heels, who held on to win 9-2.
Little did anyone know that very well might have been Aaron's last collegiate game.
Less than 24 hours later, Fox gathered his players in the players' lounge and told them the ACC had suspended all athletic-related activities due to the coronavirus pandemic. Within an hour, the NCAA canceled all remaining winter and spring championships. And before long, Aaron, like thousands of student-athletes across the country, found himself heading home.
In the weeks before then, Aaron's parents and Teddy had warned him about the virus. But that didn't make the abrupt end to his sophomore season any easier to stomach.
"It was a very sad moment," said Ted of the family's call with Aaron after he received the news. "You could see him almost teary-eyed. You could tell his voice was broken up. It was like this out-of-body experience. I remember him saying to me, 'This could be the last time I ever play at Carolina.' He was devastated."
Monopoly, schoolwork and rounds of batting practice have consumed much of Aaron's time since he returned to Rye Brook. The rest has been predominantly filled with meetings with MLB teams, almost triple the amount he spoke with coming out of high school, said his father.
As a draft-eligible sophomore due to his age, Aaron has more leverage in signing-bonus negotiations than the typical draftee. He also has the benefit of being a draft-eligible sophomore again next year, if he doesn't sign a pro contract this summer, since the NCAA granted spring student-athletes an additional year of eligibility.
"I'm in a good spot for whatever I want to do," he said. "If the situation is right, I have no problem with going to play professionally. But if it's not, then I go back to North Carolina with 40 of my best friends and play again."
Something the Tar Heels would surely welcome.
Few players on UNC's roster are more beloved and respected than Aaron, whose positivity has garnered him as many compliments as his exceptional power. Junior pitcher/designated hitter Joey Lancellotti is one of many players who doesn't hesitate to brag about the slugger, who served as a vital resource for him as he transitioned back into hitting this season.
"We'd go in at like 9 o'clock at night and he would go in and we would throw to each other and he would be giving me tips," said Lancellotti, one of Aaron's housemates. "He literally just wanted to see me excel, and he saw a couple of things he wanted to help with."
Rarely, if ever, over the last two years did a game go by where Aaron didn't stop by before or after to interact with some young fans. That included a pair of Pittsburgh fans during the team's road series against the Panthers last May. And of course, there was Brady Niles, the 7-year-old who Aaron befriended shortly before Brady passed away from brain cancer in December 2018. A year and a half later, Aaron and his parents still stay in touch with the Niles family.
Aaron's impact on those people has been immense. He's made just as strong an impression on his coaches.
"You just look forward to seeing Aaron Sabato every day," Forbes said. "He's just fun to be around. He's funny. And there are days when he takes BP when you just sit there and watch him in a little bit of awe. I haven't coached as long as Coach Fox, but I've coached a while and been around some pretty good players. And, man, there haven't been many where you just stop sometimes what you're doing and watch them hit."
And who can make the impossible seem possible.
