Erik Bakich on Cam Cannarella entering 2025: 'He's our little superhero'

The Clemson Tigers are entering the 2025 baseball season with some massive expectations. For head coach Erik Bakich, a big reason why the team is expected to do so well is the play of Cam Cannarella, the team’s star center fielder.

Cam Cannarella enters the season projected by many to become a first round pick in the upcoming MLB Draft and, as Erik Bakich shared with D1Baseball, he’s also become a kind of superhero for the team during his time with the program.

“He’s our little superhero,” Erik Bakich said. “He can do things on a field that other people can’t do. He has this ability to improvise. Defensively, especially, he just creates things out of nothing. Offensively, and defensively too, but offensively especially he just has that clutch gene that everybody is wanting to quantify and how do you put a number on it? You just know some guys have it or they don’t, and he’s got it.”

Erik Bakich gave an example of what he was talking about from last season. Specifically, the performance that Cam Cannarella put together in the Super Regional last season.

“He gets big clutch hits in big moments. Every coach wants your big-time players to step up in big-time games, and he’s kind of the epitome of that. That Game 2 of the Super Regional had no business going as long as it did,” Bakich said. “And Cam is the reason it extended. He hits the three-run homer to tie. He makes the game-saving catch in center field that would have ended the game because Florida was the home team in that game. He’s running off the field, saying, ‘I told y’all I didn’t want to go home.'”

In 2023, Cam Cannarella broke onto the scene for Clemson as a First-Team Freshman All-American. He was also the ACC Freshman of the Year and a First-Team All-ACC selection. He then followed that up in 2024 as a Golden Spikes Award Watch List member, Bobby Bragan National Collegiate Slugger Award Watch List member, and Third-Team All-ACC selection.

Over the course of 117 college games, Cam Cannarella is hitting .363 with a .440 OBP and a .560 slugging percentage. On top of that, he’s hit 18 career home runs with 107 RBIs. He also stole 24 bases, all of which came in his freshmen season. Defensively, he’s only committed three errors in his career and has 241 total chances out in center field.

“He’s got a superpower inside of him that I don’t know if you can quantify it,” Bakich said. “But he’s just one of those kids that if he can stay healthy, he’s got a chance to play the game a long, long time.”

Clemson will open its season on February 14th against Oklahoma State in Arlington, Texas.