Corbin Burnes

Brewers ace Corbin Burnes lost his arbitration hearing against the team this week and, upon being asked about the process in Brewers camp today, offered a rather candid assessment of the hearing (Twitter links, both with video, via Todd Rosiak of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel and Adam McCalvy of MLB.com). The two-time All-Star and 2021 NL Cy Young winner expressed “disappointment” not in the loss itself but in the way the team approached negotiations and conducted itself during the trial. Most troubling for Brewer fans is that, asked specifically about his relationship with the team, Burnes admitted that damage had indeed been done.

“There’s no denying that the relationship is definitely hurt,” the right-hander said. “There’s really no way of getting around that. Obviously, we’re professionals and we’re going to go out there and do our job. Keep doing what I can every fifth day that I go out there. But some of the things that are said, for instance, basically putting me at the forefront of why we didn’t make the postseason last year — that’s something that probably doesn’t need to be said.”

Burnes made clear that the Brewers did not, at any point, attack his character or disparage him as a person, but the implication was still that lines were crossed in the back-and-forth of the trial. Moreover, the 28-year-old was disappointed with the team’s lack of effort to avoid a trial at all.

“The Brewers never made a real attempt to try to come to a deal to avoid a hearing, at least from our perspective” Burnes explained. “…Even up until the days before, there were some phone calls back and forth, and basically it just came out that we were going to end up going to a hearing. That was kind of how it ended. I think we saw from the deadline day that we were going to end up at a hearing, just with the lack of attempts to get a deal done. It’s unfortunate that it ended up that way.”

The team, Burnes said, made a late but “pretty poor” two-year offer. However, MLB.com’s Adam McCalvy reports that said offer wasn’t even a guaranteed deal to buy out Burnes’ final two arbitration seasons, but rather a one-year deal with an option. Such contracts aren’t considered straight one-year deals by “file and trial” clubs, as the presence of an option prevents them from being cited as data points in future hearings.

Burnes’ candor upon being asked about the matter is simultaneously refreshing and fascinating — and, for Brewers fans, likely infuriating. (MLBTR readers are encouraged to take a few minutes to watch the entirety of his comments in the video links above to grasp the full scope of his comments and the issues  he took with the team’s approach.) The typical line following arbitration hearings is that they’re “just business,” and while many players surely feel that way, Burnes’ comments are a reminder that there’s a personal component to the process and, at the end of the day, the teams are dealing with human beings.

For instance, the right-hander notes that his hearing was scheduled on Valentine’s Day, meaning he spent the majority of the day on a plane or in the trial, only making it home to see his wife around 11pm. He also spoke of the seven years he’s spent rising from the draft to his current status, calling it “tough to hear” some of the things that the team brought to its case against him. “They won [the hearing],” Burnes said, “but when it came down to winning or losing the hearing, it was more than that for me.”

It bears emphasizing that Burnes was asked to open up about the hearing and didn’t necessarily head to camp looking to broadcast any ill feelings toward his longtime employer, but the fact that he was willing to do so in a public setting speaks to the personal stakes that can come into play in these often contentious hearings. It’s a large reason that all parties are typically motivated to avoid going in front of an arbitration panel, though a handful of cases to reach this juncture every year.

The $750K gap that separated the Brewers’ $10.01MM submission and Burnes’ $10.75MM figure is generally considered peanuts for MLB clubs; that’s scarcely more than the league-minimum salary under the new collective bargaining agreement, and the fact that a team will go to a trial and risk just this type of alienation to save relatively trivial sums is often a point of consternation among fans.

We’ve explored the team perspective with regard to arbitration here at MLBTR in the past, pointing out that clubs take hard lines and are willing to go to trial more due to down-the-road implications than immediate, present-day savings. Making a concession on a $750K sum to keep Burnes happy, in a vacuum, seems like an easy call. But if every club took that approach and acquiesced on the small gaps in arbitration, those concessions would become data points for future arbitration cases, and arbitration salaries would spike in fairly rapid fashion. That explanation doesn’t necessarily lessen the frustration among fans and likely only increases it among players, but the simple fact of the matter is that hardline tactics like this generally work. Dontrelle Willis‘ $4.35MM salary as a first-time arbitration-eligible pitcher way back in 2006 stood as a standard for first-time arbitration-eligible pitchers for upwards of 15 years, for instance, despite escalating revenues and player salaries throughout the league.

Indeed, the Brewers released a statement of their own on the matter, praising Burnes as a leader and a vital cog for their team. Said general manager Matt Arnold:

“The arbitration process always presents uncomfortable situations for both the club and player involved. It is never easy to present a case against a member of the Brewers family. I’d like to reiterate that we view Corbin as one of the leaders of our franchise and value him as an elite talent in the game. Corbin is a major contributor to the organization both on and off the field, and we look forward to another outstanding season from him in 2023.”

The club’s intentions notwithstanding, Burnes clearly doesn’t feel as though those comments are in alignment with the manner in which he was characterized in the trial. Teams will go to great lengths to win an arbitration hearing, but it’s still eye-opening to hear that the Brewers’ argument in any way linked their postseason miss to Burnes’ performance; Burnes made 33 starts, pitched to a 2.94 ERA and actually had better results against teams with winning records (2.82 ERA) than he did against sub-.500 clubs (3.09 ERA). That includes a masterful 1.29 ERA and 32-to-4 K/BB ratio in 28 innings against the NL Central champion Cardinals.

There’s no indication that any bad blood between Burnes and the team will lead to a trade or prevent Burnes from accepting an extension offer, if the Brewers make a long-term offer to his liking. At the same time, it’s certainly telling to hear such open levels of frustration and disappointment from a star-caliber pitcher with free agency looming after the 2024 campaign. The resultant chip on Burnes’ shoulder could serve as extra motivation both in 2023 and in arbitration again next season, but the Milwaukee ace made clear that he doesn’t plan to dwell on the hearing and will shift his attention to the upcoming season.

“At the end of the day, it’s disappointing, but you’ve got to get past it,” said Burnes. “Obviously, now the focus is playing baseball, and going out and doing what I can for the teammates and the fans.”

Brewers right-hander Corbin Burnes is getting near the end of a third straight excellent campaign, establishing himself as one of the best pitchers in baseball. Once this season is done, he will have just two years of team control remaining, making him a fairly logical extension candidate. However, Burnes tells Adam McCalvy of MLB.com that no such talks have taken place yet.

“You would think,” Burnes said when asked if this offseason would be a good time to get negotiations started. “You would think maybe there would have been some initial talks last offseason, but nothing.”

Burnes struggled a bit to get acclimated to the majors, especially in 2019. That year, he allowed an incredible 17 home runs in just 49 innings, producing a shocking 38.6% HR/FB rate and 8.82 ERA. However, he righted the ship immaculately in 2020, throwing 59 2/3 innings in the shortened season with a 2.11 ERA, 36.7% strikeout rate and 46.4% ground ball rate. His 10% walk rate was a bit high, but it was still an excellent breakout.

Though some might have written this off as a small sample flash-in-the-pan, Burnes quickly erased those concerns in 2021. He threw 167 innings that year with a 2.43 ERA, 35.6% strikeout rate, 48.8% ground ball rate and cut his walk rate effectively in half to 5.2%. He was awarded the National League Cy Young for that elite season and has been pitching at almost the same level again in 2022.

Though the Brewers are surely delighted to have seen Burnes blossom to this degree, it does mean that he will become expensive. He reached arbitration for the first time last offseason and is earning $6.5MM here in 2022. Since he’s having another excellent season, he’ll be due another hefty raise for 2023 and likely for 2024 as well. For a pitcher of Burnes’ caliber, it will still be incredible value for money, though it does raise the possibility of the team considering a trade. After all, the Brewers did just send out another excellent pitcher who was getting expensive: Josh Hader.

Hader isn’t an exact apples-to-apples comparison to Burnes, as he’s a reliever and also qualified for Super Two status, meaning he would get four trips through arbitration instead of three. There are similarities as well, though. By the time of his trade this year, Hader was making $11MM and had a year and a half of team control remaining. Burnes will likely be making a similar salary next year and will have the same amount of control when the deadline is rolling around. The parallels aren’t lost on Burnes.

“For anyone who isn’t on a long-term deal, once you get into your later years of arbitration, anything can happen,” Burnes said. “We saw it with Hader. We might see it this offseason. I don’t know what route the front office is going to take.” Burnes then added, “Who knows what’s going to happen this offseason. Who knows what’s going to happen at the next Trade Deadline. At this point, there’s a couple of guys remaining from our 2018 and ‘19 postseason teams, and it’s like, this could be maybe the last year. Maybe next year is the last year. Maybe we get two more years. We don’t really know. It’s hard to look at it like that but you don’t know what’s going to happen.”

With most other teams, it would be a no-brainer to keep an ace like Burnes through arbitration and perhaps even extend him. The Brewers have never really been huge spenders, however, and financial concerns will creep into anything they do. They ran an Opening Day payroll of $132MM this year, according to Cot’s Baseball Contracts. That placed them 19th among the 30 teams in the league in that department, spending less than half of teams like the Dodgers and Mets, though it still represented a franchise high.

Lorenzo Cain‘s contract will be off the books following this year, which will open up room for another significant deal beside Christian Yelich on the ledger. However, Burnes isn’t the only player that Milwaukee will have to think about. Brandon Woodruff, Willy Adames, Adrian Houser and Eric Lauer are in the same position as Burnes, going through arbitration with free agency approaching after the 2024 season. If the Brewers have some payroll space to work with, they might want to use it on some of that group instead of Burnes, as they would all likely be slightly behind him on the earnings scale.

An extension for a pitcher of Burnes’ caliber wouldn’t be cheap, after all. Since February of 2014, there have only been six extensions given to starting pitchers between four and five years of service time, which is where Burnes will be this winter. Of those six, one of them was for veteran journeyman Wade LeBlanc, who is not a good comparison for Burnes. Neither is Mike Clevinger, who signed a two-year deal covering his final arbitration seasons while he was about to undergo Tommy John surgery. The Rockies recently gave extensions to Kyle Freeland and German Marquez, who each got five years and over $50MM, despite being nowhere near Burnes’ level. Kyle Hendricks got $55.5MM over four years back in 2019 after years of solid performance, though not quite at the elite tier Burnes has reached so far.

Perhaps the best comparison is Jacob deGrom, who signed a four-year, $120.5MM extension in March of 2019. He had already agreed to a $17MM salary for 2019, with this new extension covering four years beyond that. deGrom had just finished a phenomenal 2018 season wherein he threw 217 innings with a 1.70 ERA, 32.2% strikeout rate, 5.5% walk rate and 46.4% ground ball rate. That season is a notch above what Burnes has done so far, though that was a huge jump over deGrom’s previous two seasons, with the Mets’ righty registering a 3.53 ERA in 2017 and a 3.04 in 2016. deGrom was also going into his age-31 season, reflecting his late-bloomer trajectory. Burnes is turning 28 next month, meaning he could quite reasonably expect a longer commitment than what deGrom got.

Only once have the Brewers gone into nine-figure territory on a contract, which was the nine-year, $188.5MM extension given to Yelich in March of 2020. That deal is still on the books for a good while, paying Yelich $26MM annually from now until the end of the 2028 season. Extending Burnes would require adding another contract with an average annual value in that vicinity, likely even higher. If the club continues running out payrolls similar to this year’s $132MM Opening Day figure, extending Burnes would mean close to half their budget being used up on just two players.

Thanks largely to an excellent pitching staff, the Brewers have been consistently competitive in recent years, despite the modest spending. They’ve qualified for the postseason in each of the previous four seasons, including a pair of division titles. Despite a rough stretch here in late 2022, they’re still in the mix to make the playoffs again, sitting two games behind the Padres for the final Wild Card spot. However, with many of their core players continuing to earn higher salaries, they might have to make some tough decisions about who they want to try to keep and who’s a candidate to follow Hader out of town.