Tennessee baseball pitcher Chase Burns has won SEC Co-Pitcher of the Week after a pair of fantastic relief outings in the Vols’ series sweep over Vanderbilt.
This is the first time Burns has received SEC Pitcher of the Week honors. Burns is sharing the recognition with Georgia’s Charlie Goldstein.
Burns made two appearances out of the bullpen against Vanderbilt: one on Friday and one on Sunday. In his two appearances, Burns pitched four total innings and gave up no runs with just one hit.
Burns’ first appearance was the longer of the two, taking over in the 10th inning with a runner on first and no outs. The sophomore struck out three straight to get out of the inning in what was a crucial moment early in extra innings.
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The Gallatin, Tennessee, native went on to strike out four more batters across the next two innings and allowed zero baserunners, as Griffin Merritt gunned down the only Commodore who got a base-hit against Burns.
“His outing was impressive enough (that) I don’t have words for it,” Vitello said after Friday’s game. “And yet, I’ll stop myself and say he’s capable of that.”
Tennessee ultimately won Friday night’s contest thanks to Merritt’s walk-off home run in the bottom of the 12th.
During Sunday’s game, Burns came out of the pen to pitch in the ninth inning. Tennessee led Vanderbilt 10-5 entering the final inning, and Burns retired the side in order on only nine pitches to finish Vanderbilt and complete the sweep.
In total, Burns retired 11 of 12 batters faced across his two appearances and struck out eight.
Burns entire stat line from his two appearances is below:
4.0 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 8 K, 36 strikes on 51 total pitches.
Since Burns has taken on a relief role that started in the Arkansas series, he has been nothing short of phenomenal.
“I think he just needed a reset,” Vitello said on Burns. “He just needed Coach [Rick] Barnes to call a 20-second timeout and reset and realize there’s still half of the year left, and he could put together a pretty dang good year.”
Going back to his appearance in the series finale at Arkansas, Burns ERA over his last three outings is 0.56.
