More than midway through the 2009 college baseball season, Chase Burnette was mainly known as Georgia Tech’s pinch-hitter extraordinaire and an occasional starter in the outfielder.

Fast-forward just over a year, and the Buford grad is now a professional baseball player, a status he gained after agreeing to terms with the Cleveland Indians organization late Monday.

Terms of the deal, which Burnette signed almost a week after being selected by Cleveland in the 18th round of the 2010 Major League Baseball First Year Player Draft, were not available.

Burnette’s signing marked the end of one journey for him and the beginning of another, one which begins when he reports to the Mahoning Valley Scrappers of the short-season Class A New York-Penn League today.

“I’m pumped. I can’t wait,” Burnette said.

The 6-foot-2, 206-pound outfielder did plenty of waiting in his first three seasons at Georgia Tech, taking a redshirt in his true freshman season and being limited to just 45 at-bats the season after that.

However, he found a niche as a strong left-handed bat off the bench before breaking into the Yellow Jackets’ starting lineup toward the end of last season before having a major breakout season this spring.

Burnette led the Jackets with 89 total hits and 19 doubles, and finished in the top-three among all Tech regular players in batting average (third, .356), triples (second, 4), home runs (tied for third, 17), RBIs (second, 66) and slugging percentage (second, .668).

“At that point (throughout most of last season), I wasn’t even thinking about (a pro career),” Burnette said. “It wasn’t really on my mind.”

So when he was selected by the Indians last week, it wasn’t a difficult decision to make for him to sign despite still having a year left of eligibility at Tech had he chosen to remain there and take his chances on next year’s draft.

“It’s been a dream of mine (to play pro ball),” Burnette said. “Me and my wife (Caitlin, whom he married Jan. 1) talked about it and figured it would be an awesome opportunity and a great adventure for us.”