Corbin Burnes Shines Again As Trey Mancini Walks off the White Sox

Corbin Burnes had another solid Cactus League outing for the Arizona Diamondbacks in his fifth outing of the spring. The Diamondbacks won the game on a two-run bomb to center field off the bat of Trey Mancini to win 9-8 at Salt River Fields.

Burnes pitched into the fifth inning, throwing 64 pitches, 42 for strikes, allowing one run on four hits. Burnes did not walk a batter and struck out four.

The ace right-hander made heavy use of his trademark cutter in this one, throwing 46 of them, or 72%. Burnes explained that percentage.

"A lot of lefties in the lineup, so we've got to use the cutters on both sides of the plate. Would like to have a few more righties in there so we could work the sinker a little bit more. When lineups are lefty heavy we tend to use the cutter a little bit more," Burnes said.

Burnes was happy he was able to induce a WHIFF on four of the first five swings against the pitch in the first inning. Although he got just one more swing-and-miss in the next 18 hacks, he got the contact outs he needed.

Burnes retired the side in order in the first, second, and fourth innings. He ran into a little trouble in the third however. A leadoff double by Omar Narvaez and a base hit by Brooks Baldwin led to a run. He got out of the inning on a sharp line drive double play to first baseman Josh Naylor, who snared the ball and stepped on first for the unassisted DP.

His outing ended when Lourdes Gurriel Jr. lost a popup in the sun that fell in for a base hit. He got the all important fifth up-down however and is on track with his ramp up towards the start of the season. Manager Torey Lovullo has still not announced who will be the opening day starter between Burnes and Gallen.

Naylor hit his first home run of the spring and Gurriel had two RBI singles. Randal Grichuk hit a bases-clearing double in a four-run fifth inning. Ketel Marte had some fun pretending to charge the mound after former teammate Tyler Gilbert hit him with a pitch earlier in the inning.

This was hysterical interplay between Ketel Marte and former teammate Tyler Gilbert after Marte was hit by pitch, pretending to charge mound. Great job by Alex Weiner capturing this vid. pic.twitter.com/3o3UMydBpV
— Jack Sommers (@shoewizard59) March 15, 2025

Reliever John Curtiss allowed three runs in the sixth inning and Kyle Nelson continued his difficult spring comeback from Thoracic Outlet Surgery, allowing four runs in the eight. The left-hander has now given up nine runs in 5.2 innings on 10 hits, including three homers, and three walks.

Mancini came up with one on and two outs in the bottom of the ninth and launched a fastball high above the batter's eye in dead center field to walk it off. Mancini has been enjoying a good spring as he attempts to come back once again.

"Torey Lovullo was extremely happy for the first baseman. When you walk off the field and hit a walk off home run, it doesn't matter if you're in little league, high school, college, pro ball, it just feels wonderful. So it was a good moment for him."

Mancini said "It feels great. It's a spring training game but you always appreciate getting to hit a walk off home run, something I definitely don't take for granted. It was a cool moment and felt good to get a hold of one"

Mancini said he feels he's trending well after not playing last year. He's mostly focused on being patient with getting his strike zone awareness back, which takes time. He knows the surface batting average numbers look good, but he said that early on in spring there were too many three pitch strikeouts, followed by a hit in between.

"I know what a professional at bat looks like, and that's more what I'm looking for, is putting together professional at bats, controlling the strike zone, hitting pitches I can handle. Early on I was a little over aggressive." The trend has been positive for Mancini in this regard.

The Diamondbacks head over to Peoria on Sunday to play the San Diego Padres at 1:10 P.M. Brandon Pfaadt will start for the D-backs and left-hander Kyle Hart gets the ball for the Friars.

Corbin Burnes Shines Again As Trey Mancini Walks off the White Sox

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