The Arizona Diamondbacks have landed the best starting pitcher on the free agent market. The D-backs and righty Corbin Burnes have agreed to a six-year contract worth $210 million, reports Jon Heyman. The team has not yet confirmed the signing. According to Heyman, Burnes’ contract with Arizona includes an opt-out after the 2026 season.
Burnes, 30, joined the Baltimore Orioles in a three-player trade with the Milwaukee Brewers last offseason. He had a terrific season with the O’s, throwing 194 ⅓ innings with a 2.92 ERA and 181 strikeouts. That earned him a fifth-place finish in the AL Cy Young voting. Burnes allowed one run in eight innings in his only start this postseason.
Our R.J. Anderson ranked Burnes the second-best free agent available this offseason, behind only Juan Soto. Here’s his write-up:
At first blush, Burnes is clearly this free-agent class’ best and most reliable starting pitcher. He’s earned four consecutive trips to the All-Star Game; he’s among the league leaders in innings pitched since the pandemic; and he’s proved that his game works both inside the American League and outside of Milwaukee, as if there was any doubt. Yet if you look closely enough at his profile, you’ll notice some hints of potential decline. For starters, Burnes’ strikeout rate deteriorated for a fourth year in a row, dipping beneath a batter per inning for the first time in his career. His trademark cutter, the primary pitch in his bag, returned its worst results (highest average and lowest whiff rate) until some late-season tinkering helped get it back on course. His in-zone contact rate, meanwhile, put him in the same neighborhood occupied by Kyle Gibson, Chris Flexen, and Carson Fulmer, among others. Mind you, none of the above prevented Burnes from notching another high-quality season. His command remains superb, enabling him to control quality of contact the way few others can. Burnes himself has explained away his strikeout rate by saying he was prioritizing early outs. Maybe so, but we suspect teams will think a little longer and a little harder than they expected to before handing him a long-term deal.
As noted, Burnes has seen his strikeout rate gradually slip since becoming a full-time member of the rotation in 2021. He struck out 35.6% of the batters he faced in 2021, a top-of-the-line number for a starter. That dipped to 30.5% in 2022, 25.5% in 2023, and an almost perfectly league average 23.1% in 2024. Burnes remains excellent, but that is a noticeable decline. Burnes won the NL Cy Young Award as a member of the Brewers in 2021, and he’s now finished in the top 10 of the Cy Young balloting for five straight years. Burnes enters the 2025 season with a career ERA+ of 129 and a career WAR of 17.1 across parts of seven major-league seasons.
With Arizona, Burnes joins a potentially strong rotation that also includes Zac Gallen, Eduardo Rodriguez, Merrill Kelly and Brandon Pfaadt. The Diamondbacks, who won the National League pennant in 2023, are coming off a 2024 season in which they went 89-73 and just missed securing a wild-card spot in the postseason.
