Saint Mary’s ace poses great test for Chants’ deep lineup

Saint Mary’s ace Corbin Burnes will find out next week just how much potential Major League franchises see in his hard-throwing right arm, but Gaels coach Eric Valenzuela volunteered his own pre-draft analysis Thursday.

“He’s a big-time prospect and he should go in the first round, if it’s up to me,” Valenzuela said.

The Coastal Carolina baseball team will gets its own first-hand look at the 6-foot-3 junior right-hander as Burnes takes the mound Friday for the No. 3-seeded Gaels in their NCAA regional opener with the No. 2-seed Chanticleers at NC State’s Doak Field.

The Chants’ prolific offense, which ranks second in NCAA Division I with 89 home runs, will be going up against a pitcher with a 9-1 record, 2.23 earned-run average, .208 opponent’s batting average and 112 strikeouts with just 31 walks over 97 innings.

“All those big prospects throw 95-96 [miles-per-hour]. What he can do is throw pitches for strikes any time,” Valenzuela said. “He can throw a 3-2 breaking ball, a 3-1 change, he can kind of [counter] what the team is doing against him. Some teams will try to wait him out, some teams will try to swing at his fastball early in the count, some teams will wait for the slider to come, and he’s able to adapt to anything. I think that’s what makes him special.”

Chants coach Gary Gilmore said his team should be excited for that kind of a challenge.

“All the things you strive for to get to Omaha [and the College World Series], to have the opportunity to face one of the best pitchers in the country, if I’m a hitter that’s what I live my life for,” he said. “That young man will probably pitch in the big leagues, and I get to challenge myself against a guy of that caliber and see how I stack up.”

Burnes has progressed significantly with each passing season at Saint Mary’s, which is located in northern California.

After going 0-4 with a 6.18 ERA as a freshman, he improved to 7-5 with a 3.74 ERA last season with an impressive strikeout-to-walk ratio of 91-to-33.

This has been a true breakout season, though, and he says he won’t look to do anything different against the Chants on Friday.

“They look like a real physical offense. I know coach has looked at the scouting report and kind of broken it down a little bit. I know they’ve got quite a few lefties, but I’m just going to go out there and stick with my approach, stay with what I’ve done all year, go out there and pound the zone,” he said. “Maybe pitch backwards a little bit, I’m not sure yet, I have to look at more of the scouting report, but I’m just going to pitch to my strengths and see what they can do.”

The Gaels (33-23) are in the NCAA regionals for the first time in program history and Valenzuela, in his third season leading the program, actually feels the team’s offense is its greater strength overall.

“Our depth in our lineup is really good,” he said. “It’s mixed with some older power hitting guys as well as some guys ... that are really great from an execution point of it and can really run. Our offense from day one we felt was the strength of our program.”

The Gaels are led by sophomore Zach Kirtley (.326 batting average, seven home runs, 43 RBIs), sophomore Joey Fiske (.310, 17 steals in 21 attempts), senior Anthony Gonsolin (.304-6-25), senior Anthony Villa (.297-7-39) and junior Nate Nolan (.264-9-35).

Villa said the players had a sense this season was going to be a breakthrough for the program.

“We felt that going into this year we had the group of guys to do something special,” he said. “It’s never been done before in the history of Saint Mary’s baseball, but each year is its own year and we felt like we had a special group of guys. Coach V has really been turning the culture around, and we had that belief from day one that, hey, this was going to be the year we were going to change that.”

This story was originally published June 2, 2016 at 8:55 PM with the headline "Saint Mary’s ace poses great test for Chants’ deep lineup."