Jake Agnos and Alec Burleson earn two more All-America Honors
Published 3:46 pm Thursday, June 13, 2019
- TWO-WAY PLAYER: ECU’s Alec Burleson hurls a pitch against Tulane earlier this season. Burleson was named a first team All-American by four collegiate baseball media outlets. (Mitchell Thomas / Daily News)
GREENVILLE, N.C. – ECU junior Jake Agnos and sophomore Alec Burleson have been named All-Americans by the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association (NCBWA) and Perfect Game, both announced on Monday.
Agnos, who has been named to four All-America teams in 2019, was a first-team pick by the NCBWA and third-team selection by Perfect Game, while Burleson has garnered three first-team honors this season by Collegiate Baseball, NCBWA, and Perfect Game as a utility player.
Agnos, a fourth round selection by the New York Yankees in the 2019 MLB First-Year Player Draft, appeared in 17 games (all starts) where he posted an 11-3 record with a 2.29 ERA. The lefty, who became the 12th different hurler in program history to win the pitching Triple Crown, fanned an ECU and American Athletic Conference single-season record 145 batters while walking 43 in 102.0 innings. He also set the league career strikeout record during the opening game of the Louisville Super Regional (295) with five versus the Cardinals, surpassing Houston’s Seth Romero (2015-17).
The Haymarket, Va. native combined on five shutouts and allowed 29 runs (26 earned) on 74 hits while holding opposing batters to a composite .198 batting average. Agnos set the modern day school record with 32.2 consecutive scoreless innings that ended on a wild pitch in the 2019 AAC Baseball Championships against Houston. He tallied a team-high nine quality starts (6.0 IP, 3 or less ERs) and recorded double-digit strikeouts in a contest five times with a career-best 12 against UConn in a personal-best 8.2 innings on April 8. In all, he ranked first at ECU in six pitching categories and led the AAC in seven stat columns including strikeouts looking with 58.
Regarded as one of the top two-way players in the country after being named a finalist for the 2019 John Olerud National Player-of-the-Year Award, Burleson led the Pirates outright in eight offensive categories including batting average (.370), doubles (23), hits (91), RBIs (61) and multi-hit games (23), while sharing the team lead in multi-RBI contests (16) and fielding percentage (1.000). He slugged at a .573 clip to stand second on the club and belted nine homers to rank third.
On the mound, he appeared in 24 games making nine starts where he owned a 6-2 ledger with five saves and a 3.28 ERA. Burleson earned his 11th career win against Campbell in an elimination game on June 3 in the 2019 Greenville Regional. He fanned 68 batters while walking 26 and struck out a career-high 10 batters against Monmouth on Feb. 23. The lefty allowed 22 runs (all earned) on 56 hits in 60.1 innings and held opposing hitters to a composite .246 average. In the classroom, he is a six-time ECU Director of Athletic Honor member, a 2018 AAC All-Academic selection and was a 2019 Third-Team Google Cloud Academic All-American who boasts a 3.959 cumulative GPA as a business management major.