NEW YORK — As Baltimore Orioles star Corbin Burnes reconnected with some former teammates during batting practice Tuesday at Citi Field, he was approached by a New York Mets employee he had never met before.
“Hey,” Burnes recalled a Mets development coach saying, “we’ve been passing along your mental training material to some of our draftees who just came in to help them with their mental process. We just want you to know that you’re impacting the game outside of your organization.”
A day later, Burnes remembered the encounter.
“I thought that was really cool,” Burnes said during a wide-ranging conversation Wednesday. “For me, that was the turning point in 2019. It was pretty cool to know that something that helped me is probably going to help other guys out there.”
Burnes, 29, developed into one of the game’s most outstanding starters by devoting himself to mental toughness, refining his routine and changing his pitching repertoire years ago, and he has remained at that level. Among pitchers since 2020, only right-hander Zack Wheeler (23.0) of the Philadelphia Phillies has a higher fWAR than Burnes (21.0), who won the National League Cy Young Award in 2021.
After the World Series ends, Burnes will become his first free agent and probably the best pitcher on the market. He will earn $15.6 million this season. There is little doubt that Burnes, a client of Scott Boras, will receive several lucrative offers.
Corbin Burnes said of his impending free agent: “I think I can make a valuable contribution by helping to develop some young guys on the team.” (Greg Fiume / Getty Images)
When it comes to making a decision, you can expect Burnes to take a methodical, meticulous approach that matches his personality; he’s the type of guy who thoroughly evaluates himself after every start. He believes in planning and preparation. He’ll do his homework, he said.
Wherever he ends up, Burnes wants to win. An organization’s reputation for how it treats families — Burnes is married with three young children — will undoubtedly play a big role as well, he said. Although Burnes grew up in California and lives in Arizona during the offseason, geography is not expected to play a decisive role in his decision. There may be other factors, but family and winning are the most important.
Burnes played in the postseason five times during his six-year tenure with the Milwaukee Brewers, the club that drafted him in 2016. There’s a strong chance he’ll return to the playoffs this year with the Baltimore Orioles. In the offseason, he likes to pick a team each year during his tenure that he believes can win.
“I’m going to have to do a lot of research this offseason as far as farm systems, young players and regulars,” Burnes said. “Where do teams look like they’re going to be competitive? Where do teams just want to spend some money to make the fan base happy? Whatever it may be.”
“I think I can make a valuable contribution by helping to develop some young guys on the team. Is it a group of young pitchers that may have missed the postseason this year but have what it takes to make it now and in the long run? But you never know what’s going to happen every year in baseball. So you just want to give yourself the best chance of winning, hopefully throughout the tenure, hopefully for most of the tenure, however long it is.
“It’s important because you know you can add value to a team that’s making it to the postseason and maybe develop some young players.”
Like many great pitchers, Burnes walks the line between cockiness and confidence. For example, when he was doing game planning for a new club, Burnes said his approach was, “This is what I’m going to do, whether you like it or not, this is how I plan my game and this is how I prepare. … They accepted it, ran with it, and some others started to adopt it.”
These days, Burnes said, he also enjoys the role of mentor. Orioles starters Grayson Rodriguez (24) and Kyle Bradish (27) have asked Burnes questions ranging from how to recover from bad performances to game planning and much more. He likes to talk about the mental side of the game the most, which is why the words of the Mets development coach meant so much to him.
While Burnes is becoming more experienced, all the other adjectives long associated with him still apply: elite player, tough, competitive. He doesn’t mind teaching, he said, but he’s also still learning, and it shows. For the first time in his career — and in a year on the platform — Burnes has pitched for another club, but his consistent success continues. He has fulfilled the role the Orioles envisioned for him when they acquired him in a trade last winter.
In 26 starts with Baltimore, Burnes has a 3.28 ERA with 146 strikeouts in 154 1/3 innings. He has his eye on more. And he would be quick to say he’s capable of more, especially after two subpar starts against the Boston Red Sox and Houston Astros – his ERA was 2.76 before those outings. Burnes, who made it to the league’s championship series as a rookie in 2018, hopes to lead the Orioles to the World Series.
“I looked at it like, hey, arbitration, you’re playing in a platform year to maximize your money every year,” Burnes said of how he handled the pressure of the season before free agency. “The way I look at it, I’ve pitched in a platform year for the last three years.
“As a pitcher in a Cy Young race in 2021, this was my first experience of really competing for something here. I have a chance to do something cool. … For me, the best thing was to avoid the outside noise and the pull of social media distracting me from what I’m doing. … Once you start getting too caught up in it, you lose focus.”
The idea of finding out his value on the open market appeals to Burnes. With the Brewers, he went through a contentious arbitration hearing before the 2023 season. He understood the process, but he didn’t like everything that was said about him. At the time, he was the rare player who wasn’t afraid to voice his displeasure. He was disappointed that, in his view, the club made no effort to avoid arbitration and that the relationship with the organization was damaged at the time.
A few months before the hearing, David Stearns, currently president of baseball operations for the Mets, had already resigned from his position with the Brewers and taken on an advisory role when Matt Arnold took over in Milwaukee. Still, Burnes said he bears no grudges. Burnes said he has a great relationship with Stearns and added he would have nothing against Milwaukee either. The phone will be open to anyone.
Not every player is enthusiastic about the idea of free agency.
Burnes does that.
And he makes it easy to understand why.
“Earlier in my career, when I was with Milwaukee, I was always prepared to stay there for the entire career,” Burnes said. “There comes a point where it either looks like they don’t want you there long-term or they feel like they can’t meet your value, whatever it may be. The closer you get to being a free agent, the closer you get to realizing what the true market value is essentially going to be.
“That’s still true when you’re three or four months away from being a free agent. That’s one of those things that not a lot of guys get to do. Some guys sign great extensions and it’s great for them and it works out well. I’m not saying an extension years ago would have been bad for me, but it’s one of those things where when you’re that close, you start to see what other guys have done in the past and what value you can potentially have. You get a chance to decide where you want to go. Not a lot of guys get to do that.
“The closer that day comes, the more tempting it becomes.”
(Top photo of Corbin Burnes: G Fiume / Getty Images)
