Coming into the offseason, there have been three huge beginning pitchers within the non-Roki Sasaki division for groups to signal — Max Fried, Blake Snell and Corbin Burnes.
The Dodgers, as you already know, signed Snell. The Yankees gave Fried an 8-year deal a pair weeks in the past. Burnes remains to be on the market, and with the Purple Sox buying and selling for Garrett Crochet, their curiosity in Burnes has seemingly diminished a bit. The Giants and Blue Jays are essentially the most prominently talked about groups, and the Giants have already made one splash this offseason with Willy Adames. In the meantime, the Orioles — who might completely use a beginning pitcher — are simply sitting on their fingers regardless of having a younger, doubtlessly championship-contending steady of place gamers.
That brings us to this attention-grabbing bit of stories.
Ken Rosenthal speculated on Honest Territory that maybe Corbin Burnes might find yourself taking a brief, excessive AAV contract, say round 3 years with a $45M AAV with decide outs.
He additionally talked about he want to return West since he has a house in AZ and is a local of CA. He introduced up… pic.twitter.com/GxqiaKZcWT
— Robbie Hyde (@gingersnaphyde) December 16, 2024
A brief-term, excessive AAV deal for an elite-level participant? That’s proper up Andrew Friedman’s alley.
He tried to do that 4 years in the past with you-know-who and, whereas the thought behind it was proper, every little thing else about it was fallacious. If Burnes would actually settle for a 3-year, $135 million, the Dodgers ought to be throughout it.
Burnes, 30, is coming off one other sturdy season — his first (and possibly solely) with the Orioles. He had a 2.92 ERA, 3.55 FIP and a 17 Okay-BB%. His strikeouts have taken a step again from his 2021 mark (35.6%), however his stroll fee has remained persistently among the many greatest in baseball. And he nonetheless has a fascinating Statcast profile.
Nothing fallacious with that.
His major pitch is a cutter. Since 2020, solely Graham Ashcraft (former Dodger draftee who didn’t signal) has thrown the next share of cutters — 51.1% — amongst beginning pitchers than Burnes’ 50.5%. Burnes has accomplished it in nearly 500 extra innings than Ashcraft, in order that counts for one thing. And it has gone by way of a little bit of a metamorphosis through the years. From Robert Orr of Baseball Prospectus:
“We’ve established that Burnes’ velocity has held fixed this complete time, and his slot has been impressively constant throughout this time as nicely. That leaves us with solely pitch shapes to clarify the decline in stuff high quality—and presumably outcomes—and that’s the place we begin to see some slight modifications taking place.
Burnes’ unicorn cutter was the pressure that propelled him into the ranks of the elite on the finish of the abbreviated 2020 season and into 2021. There was nothing else prefer it within the majors.It’s gone from a pitch that could possibly be described as half fastball, half breaker to extra of a conventional cut-ride fastball, and he’s getting cut-ride fastball outcomes with it now: a 9.4% swinging strike fee that was as soon as practically 17%. And Burnes appears to concentrate on the change, as he’s steadily altered the places he’s pitching to together with his cutter through the years. Now he throws it over the plate extra, searching for fewer whiffs and easier outs.”
Regardless of that, he had a +20 run worth on his cutter — second within the majors behind Emmanuel Clase. For any concern about it, it’s nonetheless an elite-level pitch. It will be attention-grabbing to see if the Dodgers and Mark Prior might do something to get Burnes’ cutter again to it’s former stage. And if not, maybe Blake Treinen might educate him the sweeper, which Orr stated in his article is usually paired with “uncommon” fastballs. He already throws a great slider (+3 RV, .196 BAA, 86.7 EV, 46.3 Whiff%), so the thought of attempting to make that even higher must be tempting to the Dodgers. He’s additionally armed with a plus-curveball and changeup — the latter to be used nearly completely towards left-handed hitters.
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The dude is a superb pitcher. The Dodgers might use one other nice pitcher. Sure, they’re in on Sasaki. Sure, they’re going to re-sign Clayton Kershaw in some unspecified time in the future. Sure, they nonetheless have curiosity in Walker Buehler. However for an opportunity to land an elite-level arm to place right into a rotation with Snell, Tyler Glasnow, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and, ultimately, Shohei Ohtani … that’s drool-worthy. It wouldn’t be on the stage as if that they had signed Juan Soto, but when they will get Burnes on a short-term, high-AAV deal, they’d nearly have to leap at that.
Oh, and Burnes posted this instantly after the Dodgers gained the World Collection about six weeks in the past.
Would possibly as nicely announce Burnes to the Dodgers through the trophy presentation pic.twitter.com/9mcwk5auCu
— Evan (aka Ebo) (@EBoKnowss) October 31, 2024
Burnes has since deleted the tweet, however the Web is in ink. It most likely doesn’t imply a lot, but it surely’s not nothing, both — particularly since there’s a rumor (from Bob Nightengale, so take it for what it’s price) that Burnes wished to signal with the Dodgers.
This may be a chance for the Dodgers to pounce. They most likely gained’t, which is ok, but it surely additionally wouldn’t be essentially the most surprising factor ever in the event that they did.
Oh, and re-sign Teoscar Hernandez already. Jeez.
