One of Kentucky’s biggest breakout stars of the high school baseball season plays his home games in Union. His name is AJ Curry. He is a California transplant suiting up in his first season for the Ryle Raiders. The 6-foot-2 left-hander is the leading hitter in the Commonwealth.
“He’s performing at a level not seen much around here,” said Ryle baseball coach Joe Aylor. “Not only is he hitting for a very high average, he’s also pitching well and playing good defense with a really strong arm in the outfield.”
Crazy video game-like numbers back up Aylor’s assertion.
Curry, a sophomore, leads Kentucky with an improbable .671 batting average. His on-base percentage is an equally mind boggling .750.
The next-best hitter in Kentucky, Danville’s Fox Spears, is a distant second to Curry with a .619 batting average.
Here is Curry’s breakdown.
Through games of April, he had 49 hits in 73 at bats with a team-leading 15 doubles and three home runs. He also leads the Raiders with 22 walks. In his initial 96 plate appearances, Curry was on base 72 times. He has a 21-game on-base streak. He has collected a least one hit in all but two games. In one of those games, Curry walked four times. He has 12 stolen bases in 13 attempts.
Curry’s impact on Ryle is unquestioned. The Raiders are batting .314 as a team. Without Curry, the Raiders would be batting .272.
“It’s like he lives at first base and then he moves to second,” Raiders junior Dylan McIntyre said. “It’s been big for our team because it just seems like he’s always on base and scoring runs.”
Curry, who relocated from San Diego to Union with his family in August, is far outpacing recent area batting champions. Last year’s Northern Kentucky batting average leader according to KHSAA statistics was Covington Catholic’s Jonathan Fitz at .511. Conner’s Gage Testerman was the 2022 area leader at .542. Villa Madonna’s Colin McLagan was the local leader in 2021 at .528.
Curry has been so impressive this season he was selected the Prep Baseball Kentucky Hitter of The Week for April 15-21. The honor was announced April 23 by Prep Baseball Report.
Curry isn’t paying a whole lot of attention to his exploits. He’s too busy working on his blossoming game as the Raiders’ primary leadoff hitter. He said he batted .271 last year at Francis Parker, a small private high school playing tough California competition, and that average wasn’t good enough.
Curry has high expectations because success in athletics runs in the family. Curry’s great, great grandfather was a minor league baseball umpire. His father played high school baseball and was a professional basketball player in Mexico. His sister is a freshman softball player at Creighton University.
“I started looking at hitting philosophies,” Curry said. “There are a lot of ways to look at hitting and I wanted to read about them and see what applies best to me. Last summer I got bored and wrote eight or nine pages on how to hit a baseball. It actually helped me.”
So much so that Curry is practically a shoo-in to shatter Ryle’s 14-year-old single season batting average record of .509 set by Conner Hempel in 2010. There may be more records in store.
The KHSAA has not updated the list of Kentucky’s all-time best single-season batting averages in its online baseball record book. Walton-Verona’s Brandon Coffey is listed highest among locally-playing hitters with a .574 batting average in 2000. However, the KHSAA has Beechwood’s Logan Castleman listed with a .620 batting average in 2019, but does not have him added to the all-time single-season list.
According to the KHSAA, Lloyd Memorial’s Jerik Ward was the last Northern Kentucky player to lead Kentucky in batting average when he hit .559 in 2018.
Curry is on a torrid clip that could wind up being historic both locally and statewide. His batting average is currently outpacing both Castleman’s .620 and Coffey’s .574 for the all-time local standard. The listed Kentucky record is .737 by St. Patrick’s Noah Welte in 2000. Welte is followed on the all-time single-season list by David Owens’ .683 for Rockcastle County in 1977 and Dylan Creech’s .664 in 2010 for Wolfe County.
It would be reasonable to think Curry can’t possibly keep up his blistering pace, that the grind of a jam-packed schedule and the law of averages will at some point conspire to drive down his batting average. But that kind of thinking would be wrong, said his coach.
“He’s actually been hitting a lot better lately,” Aylor said.
Curry batted .727 (32-for-44) in the month of April. Over his last nine games, he’s batting .741 (23-for-31) with a 4-for-4 performance against Beechwood and a 5-for-5 showing against Conner. He hit .786 (11-for-14) the week he was named Prep Baseball Kentucky Hitter of The Week.
Part of the problem for opposing pitchers is Curry rarely gets fooled. Curry struck out just seven times in his first 96 plate appearances or about once every 14 trips to the plate.
“He keeps things real simple with his swing and doesn’t let good pitches bother him,” Aylor said. “He just clears his mind and goes on to the next pitch.”
Consequently, Curry also clears the bases despite seemingly fewer opportunities while perched atop the batting order. He leads Ryle with 29 RBI and 28 runs scored, accounting for nearly 30% of the Raiders’ scoring.
Curry credits the Ryle program for much of his success. He knew a little bit about Ryle from some cousins who attended the high school.
“The coaches are great and I love my teammates,” Curry said. “The environment here helps a lot because I feel like I’m playing a lot more loose now, which is good for my mental approach.”
The major uptick in Curry’s batting average despite a life-changing move to a different part of the country follows some added height and weight, and a reappraisal of his hitting mechanics.
“I did a lot of work on my swing in the offseason and made some adjustments to my bat path,” Curry said. “I’m staying more linear through the zone instead of rotational. I’m also trying not to kill the ball every time. I used to always hit the ball as hard as I could and I’d hit ground balls and flyouts. Now I’m concentrating more on barreling up and finding the gaps.”
Curry also found a bat size to his liking. He swings a 34-ounce, 31-inch bat.
“That’s a bigger bat,” coach Aylor said. “Most guys in high school use a 33-30 bat when they should be using a 32-29. “
Curry said a bigger bat combined with his lanky build gives him more options at the plate.
“It’s more about the length of the bat than the weight,” he said. “I like a longer bat so I can stand off the plate and expose my barrel in the strike zone more. It gives me more of a controlled power. It also gives the pitcher the illusion that he can pitch me off the plate, but I can get to that pitch.”
Curry has a good idea how a pitcher might approach him because he also pitches. In seven appearances including one start, he is 2-2 with a save. He has 25 strikeouts in 15 innings pitched with a 2.33 ERA. He has surrendered just seven hits.
“We want to keep his arm fresh because he’ll be valuable in the postseason,” coach Aylor said. “We need him strong because we may start him on the mound. Not only is he a great hitter, but he can pitch, too.”
Curry says his best fastball hits 88 miles per hour on the radar gun. Last year in his final appearance, his fastball topped out at 80. It’s just another part of his game that is vastly improved.
“He’s a special kid,” Aylor said. “And he just turned 16.”