Top pitching prospect Chase Burns grew up wanting to play for the New York Yankees. Instead, he made his MLB debut against them in impressive fashion.
The Cincinnati Reds called up the hard-throwing righty for his first MLB game on Tuesday against New York.
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Burns didn’t pick up the win. But he made an impact and some MLB history in the process. And his Reds rallied for a walk-off, 5-4 victory in the bottom of the 11th inning.
Burns makes strikeout history against Yankees
Burns started his debut with a strikeout of Yankees leadoff hitter Trent Grisham, who swung and missed badly at a sweeping slider that finished behind his back knee. The first two strikes were 98- and 100-mph fastballs that Grisham watched without offering a swing.
Burns then struck out No. 2 hitter Ben Rice with a swinging third strike on a 99-mph fastball.
Then came two-time MVP and three-time home run champion Aaron Judge. The result for Burns was the same. He struck Judge out on four pitches as the Yankees slugger swung and missed at a third-strike slider.
Burns struck out the side in his MLB debut, and he did so against the vaunted New York Yankees. And he wasn’t finished.
Two more MVPs go down
Burns started the second inning with strikeouts of former MVPs Cody Bellinger and Paul Goldschmidt. That put him at five strikeouts against the first five MLB hitters he faced.
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Per OptaStats, he’s the only pitcher to achieve that feat in the past 50 years. And he did it while striking out three MVPs.
Jazz Chisholm Jr. got to Burns for the first Yankees hit of the game on the next at-bat. Then Burns struck out Anthony Volpe on three pitches for the third out of the inning and his sixth strikeout in six outs.
Burns’ third inning started with a pair of groundouts and concluded with his seventh strikeout of the day as Grisham struck out for a second time, this time looking at a 90-mph changeup.
Finally, in the fourth inning, Burns’ storybook start met its match. The second time through the heart of the Yankees’ order produced three runs against the rookie.
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Rice led off the inning with a home run deep into the right-field stands to give the Yankees a 1-0 lead.
Judge then reached on a single, and Chisholm put runners on first and second with a two-out single. Volpe brought them home with a triple on a line drive to shallow center field that TJ Friedl misplayed and allowed to roll to the wall.
The knock extended New York’s lead to 3-0. But it didn’t end Burns’ day.
Burns got the third out of the inning, then returned for the fifth, in which he recorded a third strikeout of Grisham before getting outs from Rice and Judge to conclude his debut.
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Reds rally for walk-off win
Despite the three runs allowed, it was a debut to remember. And the Reds rallied for the win. They scored three runs in the seventh to tie the game and ultimately send it to extra innings.
With the game tied 4-4 in the bottom of the 11th, Gavin Lux hit a single with the bases loaded to send Elly De La Cruz home for the game-winning run.
Burns’ final tally
Burns finished his day having allowed three earned runs on six hits. He recorded eight strikeouts, including three strikeouts of current and former MVPs.
He displayed an arsenal of four pitches: a curveball, a changeup, a devastating slider and a fastball that sat in the high 90s and peaked at 100 mph. He was under control throughout and did not allow a walk.
Burns, 22, joined the Reds as Cincinnati’s No. 1 prospect and the 11th-ranked prospect in baseball, according to MLB.com. It’s fair to say he lived up to the hype in his MLB debut.
