Article: Everything That ISN'T Wrong With Corbin Burnes, and What Might Be

[Matthew Trueblood]

The Brewers lost their fifth straight game Friday night in San Francisco, and a big part of the reason was another frustrating start by Corbin Burnes. The most maddening thing about Burnes's struggles is the fact that there seems not to be any explanation.

Image courtesy of © John Hefti-USA TODAY Sports

Through seven starts, Corbin Burnes has a 3.86 ERA. That's underwhelming, from the ace of the staff and a preseason co-favorite for the National League Cy Young Award. Worse, though, is the fact that his ERA doesn't even fully tell the story of his difficult young season. Burnes's strikeout rate has cratered. His walk rate is up. His results are worse almost across the board.

Yet, after looking in all the usual places, it's hard to find the root cause of the trouble. Burnes hasn't significantly changed his release points. He hasn't changed his pitch mix, to either right- or left-handed batters. His velocity is down, but only very slightly, and that's normal for this time of year. His spin rates aren't changed. The movement profiles on his pitches haven't changed in any significant way.

I dug into Burnes's pitch locations. I dug into his sequencing. I looked at videos of his mechanics. None of these things have materially changed in 2023. The spin direction on each of his pitches is essentially the same, and so is the deviation from that spin direction in his observed pitch movement. He's not getting struggling in any particular count, or collection of them.

I think we have to assume that hitters are picking up on something from Burnes. He's tipping something, or hitters are guessing correctly at an outrageous rate. That's the only reasonable explanation for all of this.

The scale of the problem is huge. Right-handed batters are hitting .305/.364/.441 against Burnes this year, and it's not dependent on tremendous BABIP luck. He's only struck out 13 of the 78 righties he's faced so far. That marks roughly a halving of his strikeout rate against them from last year. Hitters are swinging much less often against him this year, and when they do, they're making contact more often, especially within the zone.

With Brandon Woodruff hurt, the Brewers need Burnes to be at his best, in the worst way. They're very fortunate that the rest of the NL Central has stopped and waited for them during this bump in the road, but they need to get back to running the pennant race quickly. The stakes here are high. 

When J.D. Davis came to the plate in the bottom of the first on Friday night, he had a plan. He sat on a low cutter, got it, and drove it out of the park to right field. That requires a talented power hitter to be right about the pitcher's plan of attack, and to bring to bear an approach that works. It looks almost like bad luck. It looks like a good pitch getting beaten. One way or another, though, it's emblematic of the difficulties Burnes has had. Davis either saw something in Burnes's delivery, or was apprised of a pattern that lurks somewhere in his data set. That kind of thing has happened far too often to Burnes so far, and because the cause of the problem is either multifarious or entirely indecipherable, it might not be an easy fix.

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[sveumrules]

I know it’s kind of the boring answer, but a lot of it is just regression to the mean and small sample results that were always going to be difficult to replicate over larger samples.

2020
59 IP | 155 K%+ | 109 BB%+ | 23 HR9+ | 47 ERA- | 46 FIP-
(breakout Burnes, but relievers put up numbers like this over 59 IP every year)

2021
167 IP | 153 K%+ | 58 BB%+ | 31 HR9+ | 58 ERA- | 38 FIP-
(Cy Burnes, but the challenge was always going to be doing it for 200 IP)

2022 pre-ASB
113 IP | 144 K%+ | 79 BB%+ | 86 HR9+ | 53 ERA- | 73 FIP-
(mostly up to task first half of last year, ERA was even lower, but FIP showing the cracks with K, BB and especially HR rates all slipping)

2022 post-ASB to now
128 IP | 112 K%+ | 82 BB%+ | 94 HR9+ | 95 ERA- | 90 FIP-
(these are not the kind of numbers that make a compelling arbitration case and certainly won’t net a quarter billion in FA)

I don’t know what the fixes are, I’m just some guy on the internet, but I do know that no one maintains a 155 K%+ or 23 HR9+ or 38 FIP- or 53 ERA- over multiple seasons and hundreds of innings. I also don’t think Corbin’s struggles over his last 128 IP are necessarily indicative of a new true talent level moving forward either.

Add it all up and since 2020 Corbin is at a 65 ERA- | 62 FIP- | 67 xFIP- over 468 IP.  Give his most recent performance a little more weight and I feel like somewhere around a 75 ERA-/FIP- is probably something like a realistic ceiling for Burnes until he starts stringing together some outings.

Thats still a great SP and someone you’d love to have on the hill for a playoff game, just not OMG Pedro reincarnate…cuz no one ever is for more than a little while.

[Jim French Stepstool]

I thought the poster child for last nights' loss was Burnes giving up a solid smash for a base hit in the 5th. 

On an 0-2 count.

To a guy hitting .042.

This is also probably a boring answer, but for all the wailing & whining on here about the offense they've scored ten runs in the last two games, one of which was a Burnes start. And lost both. Unacceptable. Getting ahead & not efficiently putting guys away, that happens. Sometimes you run into plate discipline. But it just seems to me with Burnes (and even Woodruff the past couple years) they'll be cruising & then suddenly fall behind some 8 or 9-hole hitter 3-0. Or like last nite, inexplicably give him something hittable on 0-2.

Or starting your evening by giving a four pitch walk to Wade. Some of this just screams intermittent lack of focus to me.

[82brewcrew82]

5 hours ago, Jim French Stepstool said:

Or starting your evening by giving a four pitch walk to Wade. Some of this just screams intermittent lack of focus to me.

The bigger issue is that this stuff is tolerated.  Almost every time reliever comes into games refusing to throw strikes. Half the lineup has zero plan when they walk to the plate, swinging at everything and anything.  Hitters aren't running things out,  The team is defensively loose in the infield.  This team needs a shake up and I hate to say it but maybe CC is that shake up