A red-shirt junior out of Kingsport, Tennessee, Chris Cook has made a showing out of his time here at ETSU as well as during this 2017 baseball season.
As a freshman, Cook started in 47 games and was named to the A-Sun All-Freshman team. While he hadn’t secured a solid spot on the mound, he was playing at third base and having the best hitting season out of any one on the team at the time.
Cook recorded hits in 16 straight games his freshman year and was second on the team in runs with 39.
Going into his sophomore year, Cook played and started in all 55 games of the season. He had hits in at least 24 of those 55 games.
Junior year proved difficult as after starting and playing in nine games he was out due to injury. However, he was drafted by the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 30th round of the draft but decided to stick around for another year as a Buccaneer.
“As a kid, it has always been my dream to get drafted,” Cook said in an interview before the start of the season. “It meant a lot to get the text from the Pirates saying they were going to draft me, but after discussing the future with my parents, we decided coming back to ETSU was the best move.”
Multiple times this 2016-2017 season Cook has put his bat to the ball at least two times in a game.
In a series against William and Mary mid-season Cook had four hits, one of which was a double, that ended up awarding the Bucs the series win.
That game was his third game of the season with four hits, the other two games coming early in the season against Florida A&M and Central Michigan. This was the fifth time in his career that he had four hits in a game.
With only three more SoCon series before the SoCon Tournament, the season is coming to a close.
It is expected that after the tournament, Cook along with teammates Hagen Owenby (Knoxville, Tenn.) and Aaron Maher (Brentwood, Tenn.) will once again be drafted into the MLB.
