And just like that, Tyler Bunnell is looking at the end of a high school career in which he became one of Robbinsville High’s greatest athletes.
“It’s honestly crazy man,” the Ravens senior said. “Thinking back now, that it’s four years ago; I remember playing with those seniors like it was last week.”
The good news is, while one era is ending, another potentially bright one is ready to begin.
Once Bunnell finishes trying to pitch the Ravens to a championship or two, he will head for the University of Pittsburgh in August to begin a college career that he hopes may go further than that.
“That’s obviously the goal,” Bunnell said of getting taken in the MLB draft. “I’m gonna put in the work, hopefully develop and maybe get there some day. I’ve had a couple (scouts) come to some games. Most recently, the Texas Rangers area scout came out.”
And what he saw was a 6-foot-5 right-hander who has gone from what coach Mike Kinsella called a “quirky” freshman who “didn’t have the best coordination” due to a middle school growth spurt, to a specimen that has fine-tuned his physique through a rigid training regimen mostly designed on his own.
“He has a full program,” Ravens coach Mike Kinsella said. “Most kids do, but he knows it to a T. He times out everything. He’s very much aware of his own body and how it works. He goes home and has heavy lifts. He does what he needs to do to be ready to throw.
“He couldn’t control his body fully as a freshman. Each year he would come more into his size and strength to the point where now he is a monster. He shredded and he can control every part of his body. He can do single leg pistol squats. I am amazed how much he understands his own body and what works for him.”
Bunnell takes it to the extreme. One example is that during throwing drills he will toss the ball with both arms.
“I work on that because it strengthens both sides, which is important,” he said. “You can’t be strong on just one side.”
All that shredding made Bunnell one of the best two-sport athletes in the Colonial Valley Conference this decade and in RHS history.
A standout basketball player, Bunnell earned first-team All-CVC honors after averaging 21 points and 10.5 rebounds last season. He finished as the school’s career scoring leader with 1,579 points.
On the diamond, as of Apr. 23, he had forged a career earned run average of 1.40 with 230 strikeouts in 170 innings.
Through his first five starts this season, Bunnell was 3-1 and fanned 44 while allowing just nine walks and forging a 0.84 ERA. In two complete-game shutouts he threw a no-hitter with 13 strikeouts against Notre Dame and a one-hitter with nine Ks against Allentown.
He has done it all with a two-seam and four-seam fastball, change-up, curveball and slider, with the latter becoming his go-to breaking pitch after developing it this year.
His height gives Bunnell an intimidating presence on the mound, and a fastball in the mid-90s makes him even more frightening. Fine-tuning himself both physically and mentally – he is a student of the science of pitching — has led to success.
“Learning how to use my body as a pitcher, that’s the most important thing,” he said. “You learn how to put force into the ground so I can put force into the baseball. And throughout the whole travel ball process I had great coaches. Especially at 9ers Baseball Club, coach Rob Maida has helped me develop a lot with training and pitching.”
Then there is the mental aspect. Bunnell said coming out of Robbinsville Little League, “I knew I loved just throwing the baseball as hard as I can. It was always very fun to me.”
Growing older, he realized he needed more pitches and a plan of attack.
“You can be a specimen, you can be the strongest guy out there but if you don’t know how to use your pitches and know when to throw them and where to throw them, you’re not gonna succeed,” Bunnell said. “Especially this past year, that’s been a big focus of mine. Learning how to tunnel pitches and sequence batters in order to get strikeouts and things like that.”
His attention to detail is not lost on his coach.
“He has really worked on his baseball IQ,” Kinsella said. “He has plans for certain hitters he tries to execute. He’s really matured in terms of being a baseball player in all aspects. Not just the growing, hitting and catching parts, but the mental parts, the strength and mobility parts.”
Kinsella praised the hurler as being one of the hardest working kids he has ever coached. Bunnell is the first to grab equipment to hit, and is often the last one in the cage.
“He sets the example for the younger guys,” the coach said.
Although his future is on the mound, Bunnell was not happy with hitting below .300 each of his first three seasons. This year he was hitting .500 with a career-high 19 hits through the Ravens 8-4 start.
“He hits the ball hard, dude,” Kinsella said. “I stand 15, 20 feet behind the third base box when he gets up.”
Assistant coach Gregg “The Scribe” Lerner jokes with Bunnell to get his swings while he can because he won’t be getting them in college. He is heeding the advice but said of hitting at Pitt, “Never say never!”
“I just wanted to prove this year I could also hit, not only pitch,” Bunnell added. “Toward the end of last season I started to figure out what I was doing wrong. I was over-thinking things and striking out too much. I became simpler this year, my mind has had a lot less on it when I’m up to bat.
On the mound, however, he is all about the thought process.
“For a very quiet kid, he is calculated,” Kinsella said. “I would always get on him about it because he’s very to himself. I didn’t realize until last year just how complex and calculated he is. I’ve grown to appreciate it and admire it.”
It has been hard not to admire what Bunnell does both on the court and diamond. The longstanding question has been if he ever thought about opting for college basketball over baseball.
He admitted to being torn for a while.
“I’ve always loved both sports but I think it came down to looking at which one my future is brighter,” Bunnell said. “It was hard to choose. But I thought I could prevail more in baseball.”
It didn’t take long to decide, as he gave Pitt a verbal commitment during his sophomore year after considering Rutgers and a few other schools.
But Bunnell still focuses on both year-round sports. In the winter, he works on his pitching mechanics in the middle of hoops season, and in between summer travel baseball games he plays AAU basketball and joins the Ravens in their Jersey City summer league.
“Some low level D-I schools reached out to his AAU coach, but he was very close to committing to Pitt at that point so they didn’t pursue it. It was a short thought but baseball has always been his dream.”
His dream has been aided by his, let’s say “serious hobby” of basketball, as the fireballing hurler feels hoops aids him on the diamond.
“The conditioning helps when you get in those later innings,” said Bunnell, whose older brother Evan was a 1,000-point scorer for the Ravens. “It builds strengths and muscles you don’t use very often and overall you become more athletic. When you’re pitching you want to get into positions that take a lot of mobility and athleticism. Basketball has always helped me with that.”
What’s most impressive about the athlete is that he’s also a strong student, sporting a 4.2 weighted grade point average. Knowing that, it’s not hard to understand why he is such a thinking-man’s pitcher. “
“The mental part of pitching, the cat and mouse part of it, he’s good at,” Kinsella said. “All his pitches are pretty good; nothing stands out above the rest. His stuff is always pretty good.”
There are three attributes that Kinsella truly admires about his ace.
“His freshman year he bounced one on the plate that went over our backstop – and it’s a big backstop,” the coach recalled. “The next pitch he just dotted it. His ability to move on from a bad pitch is good.
“He can also make adjustments. If he misses with an off-speed pitch we will come right back to him because I know he can make the adjustment very quickly.
“There’s also his timing. He understands how to change the timing of hitters. We talk to the pitchers about why we do certain things when we call pitches, but he knows why right away. He enjoys that kind of stuff.”
It has been a long and successful journey thus far for Bunnell. He has always been a pitcher, following in the footsteps of one of his grandfathers. He used his freshman year to grow into his body and develop himself, and has continued to ply his craft.
And suddenly it’s all but over where high school is concerned. But goals remain.
After reaching the CVC and Central Jersey Group III tournament finals last year, Bunnell wants a title.
“I’m proud of a bunch of my accomplishments individually of course, and as a team,” Bunnell said. “Our team has been making it further each year and this year we’re looking to take it to the next step. We made it to two championship games last year and hopefully we can win them this year.”
After that, he’s off to Pittsburgh, where he can dine on the famed Primanti Brothers sandwiches and hear Steelers talk every day.
“I like that choice for him because it’s close enough I can go watch,” Kinsella said with a laugh. “But he loved it. I could tell when he came back from his visit how excited he really is.”
Should he continue to progress, the Panthers will be just as excited about Tyler Bunnell.
Tyler Bunnell, one of Robbinsville High School baseball’s most accomplished athletes, capped a record-setting career on the mound and will continue at the University of Pittsburgh. (Photo by Julie Lawandy),
