In 2019, Corbin Burnes had the worst camping year in Milwaukee Brewers history. One of the worst years by anyone in any team’s history. The kind of year that gives you a new home or a new profession.
In 2020, he finishes sixth in the NL Cy Young poll.
We all spent so much time figuring out what was ‘real’ or not about the shortened, pandemic-affected 2020 season, which was fluent and which was ‘important’ enough to sustain in 2021 and beyond. Knowing that Burnes has a lot of raw talent (remember how good he looked in 2018 as a reliever) and made some obvious changes, we were pretty optimistic. We did not necessarily expect this.
It’s one thing to say that he turned his nightmare 2019, which he did. It’s another thing to say that he got even better between 2020 and ’21, which he apparently did. Here’s what to look for in baseball’s most unexpected as he and his Milwaukee mates are at home on Wednesday afternoon with Jake Arrieta and the Cubs.
Much has been written about how bad Burnes’ 2019 was, and we will not let it come here again, but if you post an 8.82 (!) ERA at your age of 24, we should at least start there.
When we started saying he had ‘the worst year in Milwaukee Brewer history’, it might have been hyperbole – if you really that bad, you do not even get the chance to hold for 49 overs, as he did – but he posted that 8.82 era, and never, not once, not even in his first year in Seattle as the Pilots , the franchise had a pitcher throw 40 turns and so badly relieved. This is the highest 25 (seasonal) seasons of all time, by any pitcher throwing 40 overs. It would be remarkable if it were not so painful.
It was also not difficult to see why. His primary pitch was his four-seam fast ball. It crushed, to a .425 bat average and a .823 pass percentage. It hit so even though there are thousands of seasons where a pitcher has had at least 100 plate appearances, ending up on a four-ball fast ball, and Burnes’ 2019 was not the worst. grateful. It was the second worst.
Highest wOBA against a four-ball fast ball, 2008-’20
.541 – Chris Young, 2016
.533 – Burnes, 2019 <-------
.523 – Félix Doubront, 2015
.513 – Sean O’Sullivan, 2009
.511 – Lance McCullers Jr., 2016
If this all sounds enough to kill your career, it often is. Young, now the Rangers’ general manager, threw 30 innings next season, the last of his career. Doubront was just 27 years old in 2015, and never hit the big ones again. O’Sullivan retired with a career ERA of 6.02. McCullers Jr. was successful, of course, but like Burnes, he completely messed up his four-seater and moved to other stands.
There was no mystery about what happened. The four-seam speed ball that Burnes had was thrown hard (95.2 MPH), but despite a very impressive turn, it was a straight and hitable pitch. If you were to look at the scoresheet for speed ball movements that year, you would find that his speed ball had its 348th increase of 429, and it’s actually worse than it sounds; at least at the bottom, you might get sink. There really is nowhere worse than being in the middle. It was straight, without much movement, apart from the hundreds of feet in the seats it traveled frequently.
Therefore, he abandoned it, mostly in favor of a cutter, but also chose to emphasize his sinker and a slider that was even in his disastrous 2019 very well, pick the best swing-and-miss rate from any slider that season. (That says a lot, right here. Even in the disaster of a 2019 season, both the player and the team could see the flickering signs “this guy has something!” Below the surface.)
“Hey, the slider is the best pitch in baseball. What can we do to make the slider even better, but around the stands to make it even better?”
“Burnes dominates with an old-fashioned mix: the sinker, the cutter, and the slider,” Kelly wrote. “The cutter and the slider bar work a 1-2 stroke away from the right-hand victims,” while noting that his old four-seater seat was a weak point, especially against left-handers. “This is where the running two-seater now fills the void. It’s a tunnel dream as Burnes’ two seamstresses break the opposite path like his cutters and slides – with all three pitches coming in hard and tight.”
This image that Kelly created probably shows what is happening here better than what we have seen. Where everything once acted just like that, there is a real separation in his movement, all coming from the same place.
(The light blue is the curve; the yellow the slider; the dark red the cutter; the orange is the sinker; the brighter red, the four-seam.)
Now you are trapped, at least by the end of 2020. This is a great story, not only of an organization that got stuck with a pitcher after a terribly difficult year, but a pitcher that committed itself to it to completely renew who he is. But we promised that we would show him how to get even better.
To remind you again that Burnes posted an 8.82 era in 2019, just look where he has been sitting in some key metrics since the start of the 2020 season (min. 50 innings, so 102 pitchers) and …
ERA: 1.87, best
FIP: 1.93, best
K%: 38.4%, third best
HR / 9: 0.37, tied for second best
… wow, that’s impressive. The pitcher who two years ago could not stop allowing homers now simply refuses to surrender them.
There are clear differences here, and they are frightening to opponents.
The cutter is thrown more and faster.
Last year, Burnes threw his fast ball 32% of the time at 93.1 MPH. This year it is 49% at 95.8 MPH. This is the toughest cutter of 2020. It is the third hardest starter ever followed.
Last year, Burnes gained 10.1 inches of total movement (combined vertically and horizontally) on the cutter; this year it is 14.1 inches. So it’s gripping faster and it’s gripping more, and perhaps it is not a surprise that he throws it so often, or that it is so hard to hit.
Remember: Last year, Burnes’ cutter was the most valuable cutter in baseball, rated by Statcast’s run values, giving credit or inferiority every time it is thrown, not just because of the plate shape’s results. He’s taken it now, and he’s throwing it harder, with more movement, which is all deeply unfair. So far in 2021, he has thrown it 85 times and allowed only one hit (which, to be honest, was a home shot, but there is hardly anything to allow Byron Buxton to take you deep.) Just look at what it’s up to a variety of cardinals and twins have been done so far this year:
The slide tube moves much more.
Last year’s move and this year’s move are almost the same speed, but he makes it move more. Last year: 8.6 inches total movement. This year: 11 inches. He has thrown only 18 of them so far, so a little warning is recommended, but he also missed on 7 of the 10 he threw, so, maybe not?
He challenges even more.
Last year, Burnes actually had the fourth lowest rate of the first pitches, just below 53%. This year it is up to almost 71%, which is the 12th highest. And why not? When your stands move like that, at this speed, together with each other, why does it make the hits easier?
If he persists, it’s going to be one of the most remarkable upheavals in history, similar to ‘Roy Halladay who posted a 10.64 era in 2000 and an All-Star in 2002’, because although many good pitchers have their ups and declines on the way to the top, the declines are usually not like this. (After all, many of the throwers who did like ‘Burnes’ in ’19 don’t get a chance to prove they can do better.)
But most of all, it’s a very modern story. For much of the baseball history, an 8.82 period does not offer you another chance, not with the same team. But there was also so much interest under the hood – between the slider, the turn, the speed, all the things that can be seen attractive even in public in the winter of 2019-’20 – that it was worth trying to get right. They did, and then some. Burnes may not be Jacob deGrom yet, but he’s not that far either.