03-24-2024 MLB Preview - Flipbook - Page 5
MLB ’24
Sunday, March 24, 2024 5
SEASON PREVIEW COVER STORY
Orioles ace Corbin Burnes, throwing in the bullpen before his first spring training start in February at Ed Smith Stadium in Sarasota, Florida, wasn’t always a star in the making.
KENNETH K. LAM/STAFF
Burnes
from Page 4
lifetime ago. But to Roberts, like all coaches
who witness their players grow up, he
watches the 6-foot-3, 225-pound All-Star
and sees the scrappy, 5-5, 130-pound
second baseman fighting for a chance.
“Now he’s a man, but I still see little
Corby. We just don’t call him Corby
anymore,” Roberts said with a laugh.
Learning to fight
After St. Mary’s recorded a shutout,
the team’s pitchers were allowed to take
batting practice — a common college base-
ball tradition. Burnes was quick to remind
Eric Valenzuela, the Gaels’ coach, of his
high self-esteem at the plate.
“He’d look over and say, ‘Hey, I can still
do it,” Valenzuela recalls. “I can hit.”
As a freshman, Burnes didn’t get to show
off his swing too often as the Gaels, one of
the West Coast Conference’s worst teams
with just two winning seasons in the past
22 years, went 16-39. The right-hander was
0-4 and allowed 75 base runners in 43 ⅔
innings as mostly a reliever.
In hindsight, the team’s futility was a
good thing for Burnes, Valenzuela said, as
it allowed him to get experience he might
not have received on a better team.
“He got thrown into the fire,” the coach
said. “He got punched in the chin and was
able to respond and crawl out of it and
learn from it.”
Valenzuela, who still coaches at St.
Mary’s, puts his players through a boxing
workout a few times each fall — an unconventional method meant to teach mental
and physical toughness. Back then, his
players would even spar in one-minute
rounds against each other. When Burnes
dominates big league hitters as he did in
2021 — when he racked up 58 strikeouts to
begin the season without issuing a walk,
or when he struck out 10 straight Chicago
Cubs batters to tie a record — Valenzuela
is reminded of seeing Burnes grow from
a boy into a man during his three years at
St. Mary’s.
“He’s such a nice person, a good kid,” he
said. “But giving him that edge, getting that
animal out of him a little bit on the mound
— I think that’s what he got here.”
After a solid sophomore campaign,
Burnes received his big break. His teammate Cameron Neff had a spot in the Cape
— viewed as the premier summer league
for college talent — but he couldn’t go
because he was shut down earlier that
season. Valenzuela put up Burnes as Neff’s
replacement to play for Nicholson, the
longtime skipper of the Orleans Firebirds.
Burnes didn’t dominate the Cape, but
he more than held his own against the best
collegehittersinthecountry,recordinga3.79
ERA. In just two months in Massachusetts
Turn to Burnes, Page 6