Armand Ortiz

Key School Baseball

By Tom Worgo

Armand Ortiz may not possess the physical gifts of a top-notch Division I college pitcher. Ortiz isn’t 6-foot-4 and 200-plus pounds. He is 5-foot-9 and 190 pounds.

But Ortiz found a way to make himself an elite athlete: by working out.

HE HAS THE STRENGTH OF SOMEONE WHO IS SEVERAL INCHES TALLER THAN HIM. HE JUST WORKS SO HARD IN THE GYM, 12 MONTHS A YEAR, THAT I KNOW HE’S GOING TO IMPRESS AT THE COLLEGE LEVEL. HE IS UNUSUALLY DEDICATED.”

You could call it an obsession. Ortiz is the first to admit it. He estimates he put on 30 to 40 pounds in high school through training at a gym in his Severn home. He started working out in eighth grade at age 13.

“Sometimes, I am training even more than I am playing baseball,” Ortiz says. “Once you have it in your routine, it is really rewarding. Hitting personal records in the gym shows your progress.”

Key Baseball Coach Gary Gallant has never coached a better-conditioned athlete.

“He has the strength of someone who is several inches taller than him,” Gallant says. “He just works so hard in the gym, 12 months a year, that I know he’s going to impress at the college level. He is unusually dedicated.”

Ortiz’s training also has impacted his teammates and in a good way. He often works out with them at gyms they belong too.

“He is someone that should be emulated,” Gallant says. “He has brought kids to the gym. Over the last two off-seasons, I have been pleased with the kids as far as working out and he is the reason.”

Ortiz will play baseball at Division III Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. He carried a 3.82 grade-point average in high school and plans to major in chemical engineering.“The team dynamic is pretty similar to what it was like in high school,” Ortiz explains. “All the guys are really close and focused on academics. The team is averaging 3.7 (grade-point average). That was really impressive. I thought that was good because I would be held to a really high standard.”

Ortiz experienced a lot of success at Key. He worked as the team’s ace for three seasons and helped the Obezags to back-to-back Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association C Conference championships.

He finished with a career 16-1 record and had a perfect 9-0 mark as a junior, while striking out 77 batters in 43 innings and posting a 1.29 earned run average.

This past season, the 18-year-old Ortiz went 4-0 with 65 strikeouts in 34 innings.

“He knows how to pitch because he has studied it his whole life,” Gallant says. “His velocity would be more typical for an A Conference team and he really knows how to hit his spots. A lot of pitchers have the idea of just getting it across the plate.”

Ortiz’s best performance this past season came in a 2-1 victory over B Conference foe Boys’ Latin by fanning 10 and allowing one earned run in five innings on the road in early April.

He possesses an impressive fourpitch repertoire with a fastball, slider, change-up, and knuckleball. Ortiz has been clocked at throwing as fast as 87 miles per hour.

“I want to hit 90 by the time the college season comes around,” Ortiz says. “That’s very realistic.”

Ortiz had the chance to pitch at a higher level in high school with Indian Creek of the B Conference and Archbishop Spading of the A pursuing him.

He chose Key because of the academics and his familiarity with more baseball players currently there than at the other two schools.

“Armand in middle school was known far and wide in the travel baseball circuit as an elite rising pitcher,” Gallant says. “He played for high-profile club teams that played around the country. A number of high school coaches were interested in Armand coming to their program.”

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