Good things happen when Kyle Demi pitches as a senior.
The 6-foot-2 right-hander turned his final year at North Allegheny into a chance to play at Pitt, and now he’s having by far his best season with the Panthers.
“Overall, it’s been going really well,” Demi said. “Better than anything I expected, and better than the previous couple of years.”
After spending his first three seasons at Pitt as a seldom-used reliever with a cumulative 16.76 ERA, Demi has earned the trust of his coaches while setting career bests in virtually every pitching category.
Demi’s 0-2 record with a 6.48 ERA is modest, but he has struck out 30 and walked seven in 25 innings covering 14 appearances, tied for second on the team.
Last season, he allowed six home runs in 112/3 innings. This season, he gave up one in his first 201/3.
“I have felt really good,” Demi said, “in a lot of different outings.”
He worked 21/3 scoreless innings in a 9-8 win at Boston College on March 28. Six days later, he was a bright spot in a 9-4 loss to Miami, striking out five in 31/3 innings of one-run relief for the Panthers (18-19, 5-13 ACC as of April 22).
“We couldn’t be prouder of Kyle and his development,” Pitt coach Mike Bell said. “When Kyle came to us four years ago, he was very new to the game of baseball and was very inexperienced on the mound. … He was able to pick up things very easily and has a big, bright future ahead of him.”
Demi, who never threw a varsity pitch at North Allegheny until his breakout 2021 senior season, made his first collegiate start against Duke on April 17. Working as an “opener,” he allowed four earned runs in two innings with four strikeouts in a 9-1 loss. He learned about the assignment “a couple of hours before the game.”
“It was definitely different,” Demi said. “It was kind of a full-circle moment. It was very cool being able to do that again and have that opportunity.”
Demi took an unusual path to ACC baseball, which boasts three of the nation’s top eight teams (No. 2 Clemson, No. 4 Florida State and No. 8 North Carolina). He played only Brad-Mar-Pine rec ball as a youth, and then lost his freshman season at North Allegheny to injury and his junior season to the covid pandemic.
But he emerged from relative obscurity to become the ace of North Allegheny’s 2021 WPIAL Class 6A champion and state runner-up, going 9-1 with a 0.87 ERA and 81 strikeouts in 481/3 innings. That was enough to draw the attention of Pitt, which gave him “almost a walk-on deal.”
“In terms of being an inexperienced pitcher,” Demi said, “that’s about as inexperienced as you can get for someone at an ACC school.”
Demi only threw a combined 72/3 innings in his first two seasons at Pitt before taking on a bigger role as a junior, striking out 19 and walking 11 in 112/3 innings. But his ERA (16.97) was the worst yet, thanks to a brutal stretch in which he allowed 13 earned runs in 31/3 innings.
Demi played summer ball with the Pulaski (Va.) River Turtles of the Appalachian League, going 0-1 with two saves and a 3.68 ERA. He carried that improvement into fall ball at Pitt.
The biggest difference was the addition of a consistent changeup. Demi, whose fastball reaches the low to mid-90s, “didn’t even have a changeup” when he arrived at Pitt.
“That’s been my main pitch all year,” he said. “That pitch is the one that has been able to take my game to the next level. It’s almost a screwball. The ability to throw that for a strike and keep that down in the zone has been huge for me this year.”
This is Demi’s final year of eligibility. He graduated this spring with a major in economics and plans to attend law school. In the meantime, his season still includes series with Virginia Tech (May 2-4), Wake Forest (May 9-11) and Clemson (May 15-17) and the ACC Championships starting May 20 at Durham, N.C.
“I’m definitely open to continuing to play baseball in some capacity,” he said. “We’ll just see where that takes me.”