Corbin Burnes, one of baseball’s precious few aces, has agreed to a six-year, $210 million contract with the Arizona Diamondbacks, according to multiple reports early Saturday. The deal includes an opt-out after two years, per the reports.
The industry’s consensus opinion suggested all along that Burnes, 30, would earn the largest deal this winter for a starting pitcher. Burnes entered this offseason as the No. 2 player on The Athletic’s Free Agent Big Board, behind only Juan Soto, and narrowly edging Roki Sasaki, Max Fried and Blake Snell, a trio that rounds out the best available starting pitchers. Burnes was projected by The Athletic’s Tim Britton to receive a seven-year, $217 million deal.
Using a methodical approach to improvement and a signature cutter, Burnes won the National League Cy Young Award in 2021 and has scored top-10 finishes every year since 2020.
His exceptional track record continued in 2024, when Burnes finished fifth in the voting for the American League Cy Young Award. After he was traded to the Baltimore Orioles before the season, Burnes delivered another ace-level performance. He ranked third in the American League in innings (194 1/3), fourth in ERA (2.92) and 10th in strikeouts (181).
Since 2020 among qualified starting pitchers, Burnes ranks second in fWAR (21.7), second in strikeouts (946), third in innings (816 2/3) and fourth in ERA (2.88). Over the years, Burnes’ command has improved; in 2024, his walk rate went down to 6.1 percent, his best mark since 2021 (5.2 percent).
As great as Burnes’ production has been, his strikeout rate has dipped on a yearly basis. In 2021, Burnes struck out 35.6 percent of the batters he faced, but that figure has steadily declined since and finished at 23.1 percent in 2024. With the Orioles, Burnes said he wanted more ground balls and soft contact with an eye toward ending at-bats earlier and staying in games longer. He posted an elite hard-hit rate (top 5 percent, per Baseball Savant) and still got batters to chase (top 11 percent). It was Burnes’ first time pitching for an organization other than the Milwaukee Brewers, the team that drafted him during the fourth round of the 2016 amateur draft.
Burnes burst onto radars in 2020, when he bounced back from a nightmarish 2019 and struck out 36.7 percent of the batters he faced. After the 2019 season, Burnes, with the guidance of the Brewers’ staff, revamped his pitching repertoire, relying heavily on a sinker/slider/cutter combination that gave him enough movement to get batters from both sides out. Over time, Burnes’ stuff has evolved. In 2021, he refined his arsenal to better highlight the cutter and curveball. That has mostly remained his mix, though in late 2024 he began using more of a sweeper.
Off the field, ahead of the 2020 season, Burnes dialed into a brand-new, detailed routine; from making his bed in the morning to what time he went to sleep, nearly everything was scripted.
Burnes has since stayed on target, earning praise from previous coaches, who say his pre-start preparation may be the best they’ve seen or worked with. Combining durability with skill and wherewithal, Burnes has always kept a bigger picture in mind as he plotted out his career. Cashing in during free agency was part of that, but so, too, was an ability to last near the top.
(Photo: Patrick Smith / Getty Images)
