Seamus Brazill of Barnegat, New Jersey, may appear like a basketball player with his towering 6-foot-9-inch frame, but when he’s on the pitcher’s mound for the Hofstra baseball team, his true love of baseball shines through.
His love of the game started at the age of seven when his parents signed him up for little league.
“I was so nervous, I didn’t want to do it,” Brazill said. He ultimately found that he enjoyed playing the game and was able to make new friends.
By the age of 10, Brazill switched his focus to pitching and began taking lessons in middle school.
Brazill quickly became his high school baseball team’s best starter.
Colleges caught word of his pitching talent and began attempting to recruit him as early as his sophomore year. Among the first to reach out to Brazill, was Hofstra head coach John Russo.
Despite first visiting Hofstra on a cold and rainy day, Brazill said he fell in love with the campus. “It seemed very comfortable,” Brazill said.
He also cited Russo as one of the greater influences when deciding on which school to attend, considering the head coach made Brazill feel at home at Hofstra.
Brazill graduated from Barnegat High School in 2015, ranking as the school’s all-time leader in wins and earned run average (ERA).
Though he was a starter in high school, Brazill was put in the bullpen at Hofstra, noting how different it felt to prepare to pitch from the bullpen rather than as a starter.
“The big thing is being ready to go at any given moment,” Brazill said. “I can’t be too relaxed.”
Considering Brazill is a reliever rather than a starter, he is given less time to prepare and doesn’t get to throw as many practice pitches prior to games.
While he would like to be a starter again, Brazill is more than willing to be a reliever if it means helping his team win.
Brazill spent his summer in the Hamptons League focusing on improving his velocity and the quality of his off-speed pitches.
He ended up pitching very well that summer, winning all four starts, with a 0.73 ERA, 38 strikeouts and eight walks in 37 innings pitched.
Brazill’s fastball velocity lies in the lower-to-mid-80s, but he hopes to eventually average in the mid-to-upper-80s.
A goal of Brazill’s is to have a pitching style similar to veteran major leaguer Chris Young, as both have comparable velocities on their pitches.
Like Young, Brazill wants to use his tall frame to get as much extension toward home plate as possible, which would make an 85 mile-per-hour fastball look more like 95 to the batter.
Whether it’s being a professional ballplayer or pursuing another career, Brazill hopes to have a job that would allow him to be involved in sports in some way.
If Brazill can’t make it as a professional pitcher, he dreams of one day coaching his own baseball travel team as well as having his own indoor training facility. But for now, his current focus is pitching and holding the line for his teammates out of the Hofstra bullpen.