“God bless the team that can get him out four times,” said Belmont Hill School coach Michael Grant , shaking his head. “He always had great physical gifts, but he’s gone from being a really good high school player to an exceptional one.”

Belmont Hill beat host St. Sebastian in Needham last week, 11-8, but Bellinger gave the Hillies fits, as he’s done to every opposing pitching staff he has seen this season. He went 2 for 2 with two walks and two singles against one of the best pitchers in the state, Princeton-bound Keelan Smithers of Framingham.

The 17-year-old Bellinger is a 6-foot-6, 240-pound junior first baseman and pitcher with a powerful left-handed swing and 90 mile-per-hour fastball from the left side that make him one of the top high school prospects in the country. He committed to Vanderbilt University more than two years ago — before his freshman season at St. Seb’s — and his name is already well-known by big league scouts, but their teams will have to wait another year before they have the opportunity to draft him.

The Weston resident already cuts the image of a pro. Wearing specially ordered size XXXL batting gloves, a shin guard on his right leg and an ­elbow protector on his right arm, he uses a 34-inch, 32-ounce Max Bat made out of maple — he is the only one in the Independent School League who opts for wood over the metal BBCOR bats — and takes long purposeful strides to the batter’s box.

“When I’m up there,” he said, “my goal is to hit the ball as hard as I can, as far as I can. I want to drive in as many runs as I can to help the team out.”

He backs up his big-league look with a rare ability to wallop baseballs. As of last week, batting in the third spot for the 6-3 Arrows, he has given St. Sebastian’s five home runs and a batting average that hovers around the .500 mark. His cartoonish numbers have actually tapered off; Bellinger started the season by hitting three homers and knocking in 11 runs in his team’s first game, a 20-2 win over Portsmouth Abby. It seems pitchers have been doing their best to avoid him, walking him rather than dealing with the inherent dangers of his swing.

That was the case Wednesday when Belmont Hill steered clear of the strike zone with the bases loaded and Bellinger at the plate, choosing to walk in a single run as opposed to risking a crooked number crossing the plate thanks to one of Bellinger’s healthy hacks.

St. Sebastian’s coach Mike Schell has seen opponents pitch around Bellinger all season, and he understands. He has had a first-hand look at just how much Bellinger has improved from the time he was a gifted eighth-grader.

“He just works to get better,” Schell said. “It’s in the classroom, in his community, he’s a good teammate. He just gets it. It’s an overall approach that you have to have. It’s not just in one area of his life. . . He’s just been great in all regards, and he continues to get better.”

Bellinger’s short, compact yet ­aggressive swing can change games, and generate what one National League scout dubbed “light-tower power.”

“He is a specimen in terms of physical size and raw tools,” the scout said.

“Physically he’s very gifted. He’s got big-time raw power that’s going to put him on the radar screen for everybody next year. Really, he’s a known name already among scouts, and I think if he has a good summer on the showcase circuit and the travel ball, he’s really going to put himself in a nice position.”

For years, Bellinger has spent his summers playing for some of the most competitive travel teams in the country, honing his talents against competitors who play baseball year-round. He played Weston Little League early on, but as a tall, skinny 12-year-old he began playing AAU ball and with travel teams, and his talents blossomed. That summer, he played in a whopping 111 games and hit 80 home runs.

From there, he compiled a list of accomplishments that sounds like amateur baseball folklore: as a 12-year-old he hit a home run that traveled well over 400 feet at a tournament in Cooperstown, N.Y.; he hit a home run the length of a high school soccer field in his first varsity game; at the Power Showcase Home Run Derby, which hosts players from around the globe, he hit one farther than any of his older competitors, 477 feet into the upper deck at Chase Field, the home of the Arizona Diamondbacks.