All-County baseball: Menendez's Romero is A Very Confident Slugger

Anyone watching Avery Romero play baseball knows he's not lacking for confidence.

That's not something he'll apologize for. In a game famous for failure, it might be the Menendez infielder's top asset.

"Confidence is the most important thing," Romero said. "A slump is mostly (loss of) confidence."

Romero rarely suffers from either.

It's obvious when Romero stands in the batter's box going through his pre-pitch routine. It's clear the way he fires the ball around the infield between innings.

But it's most apparent when Romero is standing in against an elite pitcher, yielding nothing, taking a swing worthy of a home run derby.

More times than not, Romero comes away successful.

That's where all that confidence comes from: positive experience.

Only a rising senior, The St. Augustine Record St. Johns County Baseball Player of the Year has already seen an abundance of success.

According to his father, Luis, Avery has been a terror with the bat from the time he was a toddler.

As a youngster in California, Avery and older brother, Jordan, skipped t-ball and went right to baseball. Always trying to keep up with the older kids, Avery eventually made a habit of playing up a level in baseball.

It's clear he's been capable of handling it.

MEET THE RECORD'S ALL_COUNTY BASEBALL TEAM

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Romero started his prep career with walk-off hits in his first two games as a freshman, and he hasn't stopped delivering for the Falcons.

He hit an amazing .545 with 30 RBIs that freshman season and was second team all-state.

As a junior this year, Romero hit better than .450 with five home runs and an on-base percentage of more than .700 thanks to 21 walks and nine hits by pitch.

He also helped the Falcons to the best season in school history. It included the team's first winning record and first St. Johns River Athletic Conference championship.

"The group of guys that I was with, they were fun to play with," Romero said. "It was good to see players who enjoyed the game. In years past, there were guys who were just out there."

Along with fellow All-County performers Kyle Godwin and Cole Piagno, Romero's effort was key to turning around a program with almost no history of success.

"Any time you have a player of that caliber, it's good for the other kids," Menendez coach Lee Geiger said.

It was especially good for Piagno, who batted right after Romero and took advantage of his teammate almost always being on base. He drove in 20 runs, two more than Romero.

"He came through; he had a really good year," Romero said. "It's good to see when you get intentionally walked and the guy behind you hits a double. It's a good feeling know you're not getting wasted."

Many observers around the area have speculated that Romero was wasting his talent at Menendez and that he was set to transfer after playing his sophomore year (a season that actually was wasted due to a quadriceps injury) with older brother Jordan.

Or it was going to be Jacksonville powerhouse, Bolles, his father said -- laughing at the possibility.

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Perhaps moving to a different school in the middle of one's prep career is a good idea for some people. But it was never much a consideration for Romero.

Not only has he stayed with the Falcons, but Romero even played football. He won't put on the pads this fall, but there are no plans to leave Menendez.

The fact is that Romero doesn't have to get himself into a more advantageous situation. There's no one left to impress at the high school level.

Romero already received a scholarship offer from Florida that he has agreed to accept.

There's still the issue of the major league draft next year, but the scouts already know who he is. Pretty much any big showcase event in Florida (and sometimes beyond) will see Romero playing for somebody. His main club team is the Tampa Bay Warriors, who also have top prospect Lance McCullers on the roster.

But when the Warriors aren't in a tournament, Romero catches on with another team. He'll do that all summer, typically getting in about 100 games. So the prep season isn't really that important for Romero's future, but that doesn't mean there no value to it.

"For the travel team, there's always a bunch of scouts every game," Romero said. "Sometimes at high school it's fun to just to play.

"Everything's off you. Since the commitment to Florida, you're kind of just playing for fun."

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The high school experience for Romero has been about more than having a good time.

He learned a great deal about patience while dealing with the fact that a lot of teams were not going to challenge him.

"He handled it better than I would've," Geiger said. "I think he's matured enough to say 'hey if they walk me, it's better for the team.'"

As frustrating as it sometimes was, Romero had to learn to just accept it without pouting.

"Most the time, I just try to stay in my approach when I was hitting," he said. "Because you don't want to learn to swing at pitches out of the zone because that doesn't do anything for you anyway."

It worked well as Romero turned into a threat on the bases with 13 steals -- a number that would have been higher if not for a muscle strain midway through the season.

He got more than the baseball lessons, too.

Playing football with Tony Steward last year gave Romero a good model for how to conduct yourself while so many people around you are saying how great you are.

Steward was considered one of the top -- if not the No. 1 -- prep linebackers in the nation. He went on to sign with Clemson -- after making the announcement live on ESPNU.

Despite the fame an attention, Romero said he was impressed with the way Steward treated his teammates.

"Tony was really good about that," Romero said. "He never acted like he was better than anybody else. He got along with everybody.

"Everybody knew he was better. He never acted like it."

It's a situation Romero knows a lot about. He plays club ball with some of the top prospects in the country and has seen enough petulant players to know how not to act.

And Romero finds his own situation on the Menendez baseball team similar to Steward's in football. He's the only guy on the team with Division I scholarship offers, the only one who's likely to be a high draft choice next spring.

But it's best to let the bat do all the boasting. Otherwise, it could be a miserable experience for the people around him.

"That's important," Romero said. "Nobody wants a kid on their team who thinks he's better than everybody else, acts like he's better than everybody else."

It doesn't matter that he is.