2019 saw Corbin Burnes have the worst pitching year in Milwaukee Brewers history. Truly one of the worst years in any team’s history. The kind of year that brings you a new home or profession.
In 2020 he finished sixth in the NL Cy Young balloting.
We’ve all spent so much time trying to figure out what was ‘real’ or not about the shortened, pandemic-stricken 2020 season, which was unapproachable and what was ‘important’ enough to last through 2021 and beyond. Knowing Burnes had a lot of raw talent (remember how good he looked in 2018 as a reliever) and made some real, obvious changes, we were pretty optimistic. We did not necessarily expect this
It’s one thing to say he turned his nightmarish 2019 upside down, which he did. It’s another thing to say he got even better between 2020 and ’21, which he seems to have done. Here’s what you can see from baseball’s most unexpected ace as he and his Milwaukee friends face Jake Arrieta and the Cubs at home Wednesday afternoon.
A lot has been written about how bad Burnes’ 2019 was, and we’re not going to spit it all out here, but if you put an 8.82 (!) ERA in your age of 24, at least we should start there.
When we started out by saying he had “ the worst pitching year in Milwaukee Brewer history, ” it may have been an exaggeration. Which bad, you don’t even get a chance to stay for 49 innings like he did – but he posted that 8.82 ERA, and never, not once, not even in that first year in Seattle as the pilots, had the franchise had a pitcher Threw 40 innings and so poorly lit. It’s all-time in the top (bottom?) 25 seasons, by every pitcher who threw 40 innings. It would be remarkable if it weren’t so painful.
It wasn’t hard to see why either. His primary throw was his four-seam fastball. It was crushed, with a batting average of 0.425 and a slugging rate of 0.823. It got hit so hard to go back to the beginning of the pitch-tracking era in 2008, there have been thousands of seasons where a pitcher has had at least 100 at bats on a four-seam fastball, and Burnes’ 2019 wasn’t the worst, thankfully. It was the second the worst.
Highest wOBA against a four seam fastball, 2008-20
.541 – Chris Young, 2016
.533 – Burnes, 2019 <-------
.523 – Félix Doubront, 2015
.513 – Sean O’Sullivan, 2009
.511 – Lance McCullers Jr., 2016
If all of this sounds enough to kill your career, it often is. Young, now the general manager of the Rangers, threw 30 innings the following season, the last of his career. Doubront was only 27 years old in 2015 and never pitched in the big again. O’Sullivan retired with a 6.02 ERA. McCullers Jr. has of course been successful, but like Burnes, he completely discarded his four-seamer and moved on to other fields.
There was no mystery as to what happened. The four-seam fastball Burnes had thrown hard (95.2 MPH), but despite a very impressive spin, it was a straight and heatable throw. If you were to look at the fastball movement’s scoreboard that year, you will see that his fastball had the 348th highest rise of 429, which is actually worse than it sounds; you might get some at the bottom sinkThere really is nowhere worse than being in the middle. It was straight, without much movement, aside from the hundreds of feet in the seats it regularly traveled.
So he let it go, mostly in favor of a cutter, but also chose to emphasize his sinker and a slider that had even been in his disastrous 2019 very well, picking up the best swing-and-miss speed of any slider that season. (This says a lot here. Even in that disaster of a 2019 season, both player and team could see the brightly blinking “This guy’s got something!” Signs beneath the surface.)
“Hey, the slider is the best pitch in baseball. What can we do to make the slider even better, but the pitches around it even better?”
“Burnes dominates with an old-fashioned mix: the sinker, the cutter and the slider,” wrote Kelly. “The cutter and slider work a 1-2 punch away from right-handed hitters,” noting that his old four-seamer was a weakness, especially against left-handers. ‘There that running twofold now fills the void. It’s a tunneler’s dream, as Burnes ‘twosetters break the other way like his cutters and sliders – with all three pitches hard and tight.’
This image that Kelly took probably shows what is happening here better than we’ve seen. Where everything once acted a bit all the same, there is now real separation in its movement, all coming from the same place.
(The light blue is the curve; the yellow is the slider; the dark red is the cutter; the orange is the sinker; the brighter red, the quartering.)
So now you’ve been caught up, at least until the end of 2020. It’s a great story, not just from an organization that stuck to a pitcher after a hugely difficult year, but also from a pitcher committed to completely re-creating who he is. is. But we promised to show how it continues to get better.
Remember again that Burnes posted an 8.82 ERA in 2019, just look at where he is in a few key stats since the start of the 2020 season (min.50 innings pitched, so 102 pitchers) and …
ERA: 1.87, the best
FIP: 1.93, the best
K%: 38.4%, third best
HR / 9: 0.37, tied for second place
… wow, is that impressive. The pitcher who couldn’t stop admitting homers two years ago now simply refuses to surrender them.
There are clear differences here, and they are terrifying to opponents.
The cutter is thrown more and faster.
Last year, Burnes pitched his fastball at 93.1 MPH 32% of the time. This year it is 49% at 95.8 MPH. It is the hardest cutter of 2020. It is actually the third most difficult starting pitcher cutter ever tracked.
Last year, Burnes got a total movement of 10.1 inches (vertical and horizontal combined) on the cutter; this year it is 14.1 inches. So it moves faster and it moves more, and perhaps it is no 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, as judged by Statcast’s run values, which give credit or punishment every time it is thrown, not just based on the results of the appearance of the plate. He’s taken that now, and he’s throwing it harder, with more movement, which is all very unfair. So far, he’s thrown it 85 times in 2021 and allowed just one hit (which, to be fair, was a home run, but it’s no shame to allow Byron Buxton to get you deep.) just what it has done to a variety. of cardinals and twins so far this year:
The slider moves a lot more.
Last year’s and this year’s slider are thrown at almost identical speed, but it makes it move more. Last year: 8.6 inches of total movement. This year: 11 inches. He’s only rolled 18 so far so maybe a bit of caution is needed, but he also missed out on 7 out of 10 he rolled, so maybe not?
He’s more challenging hitters.
In fact, last year Burnes had the fourth lowest number of strikes on the first pitch, at just under 53%. This year it is even almost 71%, the 12th highest. And why not? If your throws move like this, at this speed, along with each other, why make it easier for the hitters?
If he keeps this up, it will be one of the more notable reversals in history, similar to “Roy Halladay who posted a 10.64 ERA in 2000 and was an All-Star in 2002,” because while many great pitchers have their ups and downs on way to the top, the downs are usually not quite the same this(After all, many of the pitchers who pitch like Burnes did in ’19 don’t get a chance to prove they can do better.)
But above all, it is a very modern story. For much of baseball history, with an 8.82 ERA, you don’t get another chance, not with the same team. But there was also so much interest under the hood – between the slider, the rotation, the speed, all the things that could be considered attractive even publicly in the winter of 2019-20 – that it was worth it for everyone. struggling to do it right. They did that, and then some. Burnes may not be Jacob deGrom yet, but he’s not that far away either.