If Corbin Burnes is open to short-term deal, Dodgers should be all over that

Coming into the offseason, there were three big starting pitchers in the non-Roki Sasaki division for teams to sign — Max Fried, Blake Snell and Corbin Burnes.

The Dodgers, as you already know, signed Snell. The Yankees gave Fried an 8-year deal a couple weeks ago. Burnes is still out there, and with the Red Sox trading for Garrett Crochet, their interest in Burnes has seemingly diminished a bit. The Giants and Blue Jays are the most prominently mentioned teams, and the Giants have already made one splash this offseason with Willy Adames. Meanwhile, the Orioles — who could absolutely use a starting pitcher — are just sitting on their hands despite having a young, potentially championship-contending stable of position players.

That brings us to this interesting bit of news.

Ken Rosenthal speculated on Fair Territory that perhaps Corbin Burnes could end up taking a short, high AAV contract, say around 3 years with a $45M AAV with opt outs.

He also mentioned he would like to go back West since he has a home in AZ and is a native of CA. He brought up… pic.twitter.com/GxqiaKZcWT

— Robbie Hyde (@gingersnaphyde) December 16, 2024

A short-term, high AAV deal for an elite-level player? That’s right up Andrew Friedman’s alley.

He tried to do this four years ago with you-know-who and, while the idea behind it was right, everything else about it was wrong. If Burnes would truly accept a 3-year, $135 million, the Dodgers should be all over it.

Burnes, 30, is coming off another strong season — his first (and probably only) with the Orioles. He had a 2.92 ERA, 3.55 FIP and a 17 K-BB%. His strikeouts have taken a step back from his 2021 mark (35.6%), but his walk rate has remained consistently among the best in baseball. And he still has a desirable Statcast profile.

Nothing wrong with that.

His primary pitch is a cutter. Since 2020, only Graham Ashcraft (former Dodger draftee who didn’t sign) has thrown a higher percentage of cutters — 51.1% — among starting pitchers than Burnes’ 50.5%. Burnes has done it in almost 500 more innings than Ashcraft, so that counts for something. And it has gone through a bit of a transformation over the years. From Robert Orr of Baseball Prospectus:

“We’ve established that Burnes’ velocity has held constant this whole time, and his slot has been impressively consistent during this time as well. That leaves us with only pitch shapes to explain the decline in stuff quality—and possibly results—and that’s where we start to see some slight changes happening.
Burnes’ unicorn cutter was the force that propelled him into the ranks of the elite at the end of the abbreviated 2020 season and into 2021. There was nothing else like it in the majors.

It’s gone from a pitch that could be described as half fastball, half breaker to more of a traditional cut-ride fastball, and he’s getting cut-ride fastball results with it now: a 9.4% swinging strike rate that was once nearly 17%. And Burnes seems to be aware of the change, as he’s steadily altered the locations he’s pitching to with his cutter over the years. Now he throws it over the plate more, looking for fewer whiffs and more easy outs.”

Despite that, he had a +20 run value on his cutter — second in the majors behind Emmanuel Clase. For any concern about it, it’s still an elite-level pitch. It would be interesting to see if the Dodgers and Mark Prior could do anything to get Burnes’ cutter back to it’s former level. And if not, perhaps Blake Treinen could teach him the sweeper, which Orr said in his article is often paired with “unusual” fastballs. He already throws a good slider (+3 RV, .196 BAA, 86.7 EV, 46.3 Whiff%), so the idea of trying to make that even better has to be tempting to the Dodgers. He’s also armed with a plus-curveball and changeup — the latter for use almost exclusively against left-handed hitters.

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The dude is a great pitcher. The Dodgers could use another great pitcher. Yes, they’re in on Sasaki. Yes, they’re going to re-sign Clayton Kershaw at some point. Yes, they still have interest in Walker Buehler. But for a chance to land an elite-level arm to put into a rotation with Snell, Tyler Glasnow, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and, eventually, Shohei Ohtani … that’s drool-worthy. It wouldn’t be at the level as if they had signed Juan Soto, but if they can get Burnes on a short-term, high-AAV deal, they’d almost have to jump at that.

Oh, and Burnes posted this immediately after the Dodgers won the World Series about six weeks ago.

Might as well announce Burnes to the Dodgers during the trophy presentation pic.twitter.com/9mcwk5auCu

— Evan (aka Ebo) (@EBoKnowss) October 31, 2024

Burnes has since deleted the tweet, but the Internet is in ink. It probably doesn’t mean much, but it’s not nothing, either — especially since there’s a rumor (from Bob Nightengale, so take it for what it’s worth) that Burnes wanted to sign with the Dodgers.

This would be an opportunity for the Dodgers to pounce. They probably won’t, which is fine, but it also wouldn’t be the most shocking thing ever if they did.

Oh, and re-sign Teoscar Hernandez already. Jeez.