Hall of Fame
Left-handed pitcher Ryan M. DiPietro was a former national Pitcher-of-the-Year and two-time All-America who helped the Warriors win back-to-back regional baseball championships.
The 6-foot-1 inch, 170-pound DiPietro, a Berlin native, is the winningest left-handed pitcher in the program’s 75-year history. A three-year starter at Eastern before being drafted in the sixth round of the 2005 First-Year Player Draft by the Kansas City Royals, DiPietro won 29 of 32 decisions and holds the current by winning 19 straight decisions starting at the midway point of his freshman season in 2003 until the championship game of the 2004 national tournament.
DiPietro, who lost exactly one game in each season, mixed a 93 mph fastball with a ‘12-to-6’ curveball to strike out 336 batters in 257 1/3 innings. His only losses came in his third career start against Chapman University in March of his freshman year, on no days rest in the 2004 national championship game against George Fox University, and against the University of Southern Maine in mid-April of his junior season.
As a sophomore, DiPietro was virtually untouchable, winning 11 of 12 decisions with a 1.04 ERA and 162 strikeouts and 29 walks in 112 innings, limiting opposing batters to 16 extra-base hits and a .165 batting average. That year, he was voted national Pitcher-of-the-Year by the National Collegiate Baseball Writers’ Association (NCBWA), first-team ABCA All-America, ECAC Pitcher-of-the-Year for the first of two straight years and Little East Conference Pitcher-of-the-Year for the first of two straight seasons. His 11 wins were the most in a season by an Eastern pitcher in 17 years, his strikeouts the most in 31 years and his innings the most in 29 years.
As a sophomore and junior, DiPietro led the Little East in ten individual pitching categories, including wins, strikeouts per game and ERA in both years and formed one half of perhaps the greatest one-two pitching punch in Division III history with 2017 Alumni Hall of Famer Joey Serfass. In 2003 and 2004, the lefty DiPietro and righty Serfass combined on a 41-3 pitching record that helped vault the Warriors into two national tournaments. In 2004, both were named to the ABCA All-America team – the only time in Eastern history that two pitchers were named All-America in the same season. In 2003, Eastern won a record 23 straight games en route to a national third-place finish.
With DiPietro, Eastern won 47 and lost eight in the Little East as the three-time regular-season champion and two-time tournament titlist.
A first-team selection to the D3baseball.com Team-of-the-Decade for the first decade of the century, DiPietro struck out 18 batters – one shy of the program record –in a 3-1 home win over Rhode Island College in 2004, and in his next start a week later, tied the 32-year-old program record with 19 in a nine-inning, 14-0 home victory over Keene State College. As a junior, he pitched the program’s tenth complete-game no-hitter (a month after sharing one) on April 30, 2005 at Rhode Island College, striking out 11 without walking a batter and allowing only three fly balls out of the infield – each to leftfielder and hometown teammate Jason Pekrul.
Eighteen years after leaving the program, DiPietro still ranks among the all-time Top 10 in eight categories. He is second in strikeouts and strikeouts per game (11.76), third in ERA (1.50) and least hits and walks per game (8.36), fourth in wins, seventh in innings and winning percentage (90.6) and tied for seventh in starts (36).
DiPietro was drafted by professional baseball twice – in the 42nd round by the New York Meets in 2002 after his senior year at Berlin High School, and later by Kansas City. DiPietro spent three years in the Royals’ minor league organization and four years pitching in independent leagues before retiring after the 2011 season.
Following his professional baseball career, DiPietro completed requirements for a B.A. Degree in General Studies from Eastern in 2014 and is currently employed as a senior environmental inspector at BL Companies. DiPietro and wife, Rachel (ECSU ’07), reside in Wallingford with their three young children.
