Heading into the offseason, the trade market contained a handful of veteran starters who were a year from free agency and widely expected to be available — Tyler Glasnow, Shane Bieber and perhaps Corbin Burnes chief among them. Glasnow has already changed hands, going from Tampa Bay to Los Angeles and signing an extension — which the two parties agreed upon as a contingency of the trade becoming official. Bieber is still with the Guardians. But as earlier this month, like Glasnow, he was reportedly open to discussing a long-term deal following a trade.
Fans of rival clubs may be eyeing Burnes and envisioning a similar outcome, but the right-hander himself effectively quashed any such hopes in an appearance with Erik Kratz, A.J. Pierzynski and Hannah Keyser on Foul Territory (video link). Asked by Kratz about the possibility of taking the same path Glasnow did, Burnes replied:
“Being in my shoes, being a year away from [free agency], I think if a trade-and-extension type of deal came up — obviously, every guy that gets this close to free agency wants to test the market to see what your true dollar amount is, see what teams really are in on you. It would have to be something that would just absolutely blow you away to get you away from testing the free agent market and being able to choose where you want to go. I think that’s one thing every player in their career wants to get to. Once you get that six years of service time — which for a lot of guys takes seven, eight, sometimes nine years to get to — you get that chance to test the market and see what your top dollar is.”
Burnes, of course, is speaking in generalities. The majority of players ostensibly share his sentiment, but Glasnow has now twice signed an extension in lieu of reaching free agency, and we’ve seen plenty of players over the years hammer out a long-term deal when they’re less than a calendar year from reaching the market. It’s rarer, although hardly unprecedented, with an expected top-of-the-market free agent. Rafael Devers, Stephen Strasburg and Xander Bogaerts are just a few examples of prominent, All-Star-caliber talents signing an extension after reaching five years of big league service.
Still, Burnes’ comments seemingly align with most star-level players and shouldn’t be taken as a surprise. That’s particularly true given that he’s a client of the Boras Corporation, whose players tend to gravitate toward free agency. (Although, again, that’s a generality and perhaps even an overstated one; Strasburg, Bogaerts, Jose Altuve, Carlos Gonzalez and others have all signed extensions under Boras.)
In his latest notes column at The Athletic, Ken Rosenthal reports that Brewers owner Mark Attanasio is still uncertain about how to proceed with Burnes and is wary of creating a similar backlash to the 2022 trade deadline deal that sent Josh Hader to San Diego. That doesn’t preclude a trade from ultimately coming together, but it’s a starkly different tone from the circumstances surrounding Glasnow, where a trade felt like an inevitability as the offseason wore on.
If the Brewers opt to hold onto Burnes, they can head into the 2024 season with him, Freddy Peralta, the recently re-signed Wade Miley and Adrian Houser in the top four spots of the rotation. Colin Rea, free-agent signee Joe Ross and prospect Robert Gasser (acquired in the aforementioned Hader deal) are among the other in-house candidates for rotation spots, and further additions via free agency or trade can’t be squarely ruled out. The lineup would need clear augmentation, but Milwaukee’s pitching would again have the makings of a solid group with Burnes and Peralta leading the rotation and Devin Williams anchoring the bullpen.
Should Milwaukee hold onto Burnes and fail to contend even in a thin National League Central division, Burnes would obviously hold immense appeal at the trade deadline. And, if they ride out the year with Burnes atop a contending rotation, they could at least extend a qualifying offer and recoup a draft pick after the first round in 2025. It’s a relatively small consolation prize for a former Cy Young winner, but that compensation still factors in when listening to any trade offers that come their way.
Holding onto any impending free agent/trade candidate comes with the risk of said player incurring an injury that tanks their value. Burnes, however, is so talented that anything short of a major surgery that would jeopardize his 2025 availability makes a QO a no-brainer. Over the past four seasons, he’s pitched 622 1/3 innings with aa 2.86 ERA, 30.9% strikeout rate and 7.1% walk rate. Burnes has made three consecutive All-Star teams and won the National League Cy Young Award in 2021. MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz projects him to earn $15.1MM in 2024 before he becomes a free agent next winter.
You’d think after seeing what happened to his teammate Woodruff that he’d be open to locking in a big contract at the right price.
He ain’t getting traded.
Makes too much sense to deal him
He’s as good as gone.
It’s crazy how much a player’s personality and desires can change how much a team can get in return for them. Glasnow was perfectly ok accepting an extension from LA which allowed Tampa to receive a greater package in return. The Brewers however have no such chance with Burnes and will have to trade him as a pure rental.
Glasnow has injury risks that likely played a factor in him getting guaranteed $$.
Glasnow had another injury riddled season he was getting nothing a but a prove it deal in 2025. Now he’s making top of the market money. There wasn’t a lot of upside for Glasnow to risk free agency.
He’s reducing his trade value for Milwaukee deliberately with that statement. I’m not an eye for an eye type of guy, but I find this entertaining ! Burnes revenge lol
Doesn’t affect his trade value whatsoever. You really think a team is gonna trade for him without asking him themselves?
So he’s lying then ? He just made a public statement to only do the opposite if the situation comes about ?
I am sure that teams have a pretty good idea of his thinking. This just nails it down that he will not be signing an extension so is a true rental.
Teams are not allowed to talk to players that are under contract with another team unless they have prior permission from the team he plays for now. Otherwise its considered tampering. A big no-no.
It won’t affect his trade value much, but it might have an effect on which teams try to trade for him. Dampening the market which could lower the return. MLBTR projected a $15.1 million arbitration salary for him.
I thought that the Brewers have publicly said they were cutting payroll this season, so that would make the trade of their highest paid pitcher inevitable. Now its just a question of where he goes.
I don’t think this does reduce his trade value. No team actually thinks he’s going to sign an extension and even if he were to, it would be at close to the market rate for pitchers of his kind. All the surplus value with Burnes is in 2024. After the Juan Soto disaster I think teams might finally be shifting away from the concept of trading for a player to “gain the inside track on an extension.” ESPECIALLY with Boras clients.
I think any team trading for him would ask if he would be interested in extension to try to lower return they would have to give up. But if your agent is Scott Boris then your going to be going to free agency unless a team pays free market prices. So no team discounts on contract.
I think any team trading for him is all in on 2024. He can’t become a free agent until after the 2024 World Series has reached its conclusion. They aren’t going to increase or decrease their offer based on the possibility of an extension or lack thereof.
No shocker here, he’s a top pitcher in the league, one year away from FA, and represented by Scott Boras (extensions are not impossible with him but not common.)
Extensions are not common with any agent.
They aren’t but with Boras it’s on a different level.
Btw, I think your screenname is right. More should get in.
Thank you! I believe it is an incredibly unrepresented group. A lot of people like to argue that the workload doesn’t warrant inclusion but I strongly disagree. These guys often pitch in the highest leverage of spots and the ones that have managed to stay exceptionally consistent deserve recognition like all players!
Brewers should take him to arbitration one last time as a final FU to him.
The Brewers have always had every intention of going to arbitration with Burns.
If Brewers follow your advice and do not trade him before the season, they will get far less at the trade deadline and even less if they hold onto him on the fantasy that he will re-sign in Milwaukee.
Smart executives of teams in this situation (e.g., Rays, Nationals) understand that what little leverage they have dissipates over time and that it’s best to trade guys like this sooner rather than later. If they do take him to arbitration and hold onto him into the season, the final and painful FU Will be felt by Brewers fans.
It depends, if Burnes has a healthy year and helps get the Brewers to the post season the QO rejection pick is a nice consolation prize. As a Brewers fan I would be much more inclined to take this risk if the Woodruff situation didn’t just happen. It would be painful to, essentially, get no compensation for 2 elite starters.
If he bounces back next year and pitches like his 2021 season he has a good shot at Gerrit Cole type money.
They have very similar numbers so far in their careers. Burenes is 2 years older than Cole was so that will lower his overall numbers but I can see him getting similar AAV.
Good call.
Certain players don’t mind signing extensions, if they like playing for the team they are playing for, or being traded to a team they would like to play for. Then you have players that are looking for the onetime financial contract that will make then one of the highest player paid status. Sounds like Burnes has the dollar signs in his eyes.
I always look at a player like Tony Gwynn, you imagine the contract he could have signed as a free agent, yes it was in the eighties, but he could have asked for a lot and the LA Dodgers or the Yankees would of gave it to him. But instead, he just kept signing extensions with the Padres basically because of the way of life for his family.
He’s gonzo. Just a matter of time.
We’ll take him. Not that that is happening.
Of course Burnes will test FA. Boras client. Based what he’s done-the market with Glasnow’s extension, Yamamota/Bellinger asks, he’s about to make 40M a season because unlike Glasnow, he can pitch over 125IP a season quite well. Yet the Dodgers just gave Glasnow what would be 2M per start for what he’s been on the mound for his career yearly.
The Dodgers have won on most of their deals, but the one for Glasnow was a head scratcher and the extension made even less sense.
I’m not sure why the Dodgers shipped Pepiot to Tampa. He’s a possible rookie of the year candidate with his stuff.
Tampa definitely won that deal.
Injury risk is there with pitchers though. Burnes has shown signs of turning down though. If he has a big year—he’s gonna get paid.
He hasn’t banked a fortune yet in the majors though. I’d personally have a hard time turning down $160-170MM if I were him.
Honesty is much better than someone like Freeman trying to make it someone else’s fault they went for the money. I don’t fault him for going for it. I fault him for blaming others instead of just being honest.
Freeman took less money when you take into account the $57 million in deferred money.
Freeman still blames others for not taking the Braves offer.
He’s a boras dude, easy as pie to spot that right off.
Will they low ball him in arbitration like last year?
That’s all staged from the owners side. Should the Brewers owner have upset Burnes who won’t be in Milw 2 years later? Or upset the majority of 29 other franchise ownerships who you have to deal with from day 1 til you’re out?
I’ll bet Brandon Woodruff wishes he had signed a huge extension after year 5. I think pitchers who turn down life changing money to “test the market” are dumb. Pitchers are never more than 1 pitch away from a career ending injury. A lot more risk than position players. But it’s his future to gamble with, not mine…
They have to trade him. If they stand pat, Barnes, Miley, and Houser are all gone to free agency after this year. The Brewers simply cannot afford financially to replace 3/5 of a rotation in one offseason. They have to trade him for some young, controllable starting pitching.
Good thing the brewers have a top farm system. Peralta, ashby, gasser, mis tentative for 2025. Plus they just got guaranteed 100% of their 2024 streaming monies.
Yup you hit on the dot. You can’t have him in this clubhouse next year with these young guys and his attitude. I personally think if he stays you may see him pulling a Hader deal where he refuses to pitch even in an important game say on short rest. Let’s be honest he is no Greinke or Sabathia where winning is the only thing. He has a history of giving up long balls in bunches. Doesn’t come out of it unless the pitching coaches figure it out for him. That’s the difference between him and Woodruff. Woodruff is a pitcher and figures things out on the fly and Woodruff been a true professional. Honestly once Burnes is away from Hook( pitching coach) , he may be the next Patrick Corbin.
Yeah that’s just what a team wants to sign in FA. A whiney quitter.
Trading him this winter is the smart move, especially if they could get someone like Tiedemann or Sheehan in return.
But Attanasio is wise to be wary. The Brewers rely on casual fans who simply do not get it. People flipped out when Gomez and Lucroy were traded, and that was when the team was truly rebuilding.
May as well keep him, go for the division title, and trade him if everything falls apart.
Lol. Brewers rely on “casual fans”? What a joke statement and an insult to Brewers fans. All teams have all sorts of fans. Many of which will flip out at trading stars.
While true, I don’t think this is inaccurate. In a small market the casual fan fills your stadium and the impact to the bottom line could be greater.
Boras will set the market with his Snell negotiation. Burnes/Boras can then say to the team that trades for him “just for you, we are willing to extend at total guarantee that is 20% higher than whatever that figure is”.
It is admirable that Burnes wants to bet on himself. However, I am sure other clubs noticed that his K/9 has declined for several years in a row… His FIP ERA last years was closer to 4.00 than 3.00. Burnes was bad in his playoff start against a team most experts thought the Brewers would beat.
If Burnes hits free agency coming off a 5th straight decline in K/9, and much further removed from his CY Young season, he may not get the offers he hopes for. With the supply/demand being what it is, barring an injury he will do well, but I’d be more inclined to give him a contract closer to Glasnow/Nola than Cole.
That’s what I was looking at. I like him a lot for one year, but a 6-year+ committee? I doubt it.
I think there’s a happy middle ground.
I think, including his final arbitration year, assuming it’s just aging and over exertion and not potential catastrophic injury or cratering of his skill sets, a 5 year/$170M deal or 6 year/$210M would still be very fair value.
Or you can see what he did with his splits pitching to Caratini 24 times vs the 8 times he pitched to Contreras. Contreras and Burnes did not mesh with WC’s wacky prepitch movement.
The thing is, I don’t think guys like Glasnow really take discounts on their free agent years. Might a bidding war have pushed the AAV by $1m-$3M per year or something? Sure. That’s the nature of bidding wars. But as we saw with Ohtani and a few other guys, nowadays the offers tend to be comparable in terms of the dollars and the deciding factors tend to come down to location, team profile (High profile? Low profile? Major contender that’s a pressure cooker or middling club that the player can ride out quasi anonymously? Etc.)
I think if a club trades for Burnes, it’s not like they’re gonna try to convince him to sign for 10 years/$10M.
He will likely get offers of around 6 years/$210M to 10 years/$425M, possibly 11 years/$430M.
I think whoever signs him, if he gets extended in his final year of arbitration, I think it could wind up at as much as 12 years/$462M or so.
I also think he’s a big talker right now who seems destined to become a Chris Sale/Patrick Corbin/Mike Hampton type.
And I think he knows that about himself.
But it’s like- there is a ceiling. You can bid them all against each other and expect them all to try to top each other by $1M back and forth, but they are not gonna go back and forth until you’ve turned a roughly 9 year/$342M market value into 15 years/$1.125B or something.
Eventually every team will make their best and final offers and the winning bid will only be by a few million or an extra year or something that at that level is negligible.
Anyway. I like Burnes. I think he will be worth the first 6-8 years of any deal he signs. But if he gets an extension offer of like 11 years/$434.5M he should just take it. Does he want to risk getting less to try to get an extra $75.5M or so when nobody is gonna go that far and he has to settle for like 1 year/$20M, gets injured, gets 2 years/$30M on a prove it deal and strings along until he retired having made $100M across a few short term deals, all because he turned down $430M to try for $500M or something like that?
Don’t be Juan Gonzalez.
Greedy player
He absolutely and is no Greinke or Sabathia.
He’s likely to have one of his best seasons to date, so I can certainly see why the Brewers might wait until the trade deadline.
I’m sure the Braves would give the Brewers several young controllable pitchers, and more, to get Burnes for one season. The Brewers could then spend the $15 million or so they save on Burnes’ salary to get some offense–theirs is not looking great at the moment.
Several as in Brito and Vasquez + prospect(s)?
I can’t imagine SDP with their pitching depth woes and limited payroll flexibility would be too keen on giving up multiple SP candidates for a rental.
Inb4 the Braves trade for him and extend him for under $100m guaranteed.
He is a boras client, so no surprise. I have to wonder if some of this is because he really wants to stick it to Milwaukee for roping him along. By saying he won’t sign, they’ll get poor offers or they’ll get basically nothing when he walks.
Very, very few players extend prior to trades and with one year left. While it might be nice to acquire a player open to a reasonable extension, teams will likely be paying just about market price anyway.
I think it will have very minor impact, if any.
Burnes be gone.
Trade him, dont need his poor attitude. Were gonna suck this year anyhow.
If Yankees whiff on Yamamoto my money’s on them turning to Burnes and FA Stroman… the prospect pool will have to be siphoned to beat an Orioles (as if) or Giants pitch but if they included Wells plus, they could swing it.
Not if Yankees whiff but when the Yankees whiff.
Burnes is a Boras client. It is rare for them to not go to free agency. Jason Varitek once resigned with the Red Sox as a Boras guy but he really wanted to stay in Boston.
It is looking like a trade deadline deal, if the Brewers are out of the race and someone offers a better package than the comp pick. If they are in the race maybe they pony up the cash but I suspect he is in next year’s free agent class.
Scratch Houser off the Brewers. If they trade Burnes I see a tank job and 76 wins a commin’.
Looks like Burnes just assured himself of a trade elsewhere soon.