Burnes is the best in MLB at one thing -- and the worst at another

Corbin Burnes is maybe the most interesting free-agent starting pitcher available (non-Roki Sasaki division), and it’s not hard to see why. Over the past four seasons, the four-time All-Star and 2021 Cy Young Award winner is second only to Zack Wheeler in Wins Above Replacement. That stretch culminated with an All-MLB First Team selection in his first -- and maybe only -- year with Baltimore.

• All the latest Corbin Burnes rumors

He’s also a perfect example of modern pitching enlightenment, which is to say “he had an 8.82 ERA in 2019 and then completely changed his pitch shapes and usage to become an ace.” We saw that ability to change within the context of 2024, as well, as his strikeout rate plummeted in-season -- raising some questions about what that would do to his market -- before he fixed his cutter, restored his sweeper and ended up finishing with one of the best months of his career.

For all of his obvious skill, he can also be a pitcher of extremes, and that is what interests us today. As Burnes heads off to the market to make some team quite happy to have him, there’s something you might not have realized he led the Majors in -- and something he was dead last in, too. As we said: extremes.

• Where could Burnes land in free agency?

The good: No one makes batters look foolish more often

For years, this was simply an eye test thing. But no more; along with the introduction of Statcast’s bat tracking metrics in 2024 came “swords,” which is a way to actually quantify the most awkward, uncomfortable swinging strikes. There’s plenty more on that here, including how they’re defined, but the short version is: If the bat crosses the front face of the plate, doesn’t come all the way back around, and is in the slowest 10% of swings for that player, it’s a sword. It’s putting a number to a stomachache, really. There are bad swings and then there are bad swings. It’s not what you want, if you’re a hitter.

It’s perhaps more of an entertainment stat than an analytical one, except for the fact that when you look at the pitchers who got the most swords in 2024, you start to realize something. These are really good pitchers, and maybe there’s some value in identifying the pitchers who don’t just miss bats, but manage to do it in a way that makes the best hitters on the planet look that bad, that often.

Most swords, 2024

• 52, Burnes ←
• 37, Carlos Rodón
• 36, George Kirby
• 35, Sonny Gray
• 35, Dylan Cease
• 34, Logan Gilbert
• 31, Aaron Nola
• 30, Blake Snell
• 29, Yusei Kikuchi
• 29, Pablo López
• 29, Max Fried

That’s a list you want to be on, right? Put another way: 12% of Burnes’ swinging strikes were of the ‘sword’ variety, the most in the Majors, ahead of many of the same names but also top relievers like Griffin Jax (the only other pitcher north of 10%). So while Burnes didn’t have the most strikeouts or the most swinging strikes, what he did have was the most that made a batter look, well, awful. For all of the metrics that don’t match the eye test, this is one that’s very much intended to.

In Burnes' case, he managed to do it on five different pitch types – and since you’re dying to see what it looks like to make hitters look that foolish, enjoy this compilation of our dozen favorites.

Or, perhaps, spare a thought for poor Zach DeLoach, who did it three times (on three different pitch types) in an 0-for-4 showing on Sept. 2.

Does it matter, to make batters look bad, as opposed to just piling up whiffs? Maybe, maybe not. But it’s hard not to notice that after collecting 15 swords in July and August combined, Burnes captured 14 in September alone after fixing his repertoire. It was the second-most in a month of any pitcher all year.

So that’s the great news. What’s the flip side here?

The bad: He’s the absolute weakest at preventing runners from going wild.

Burnes allowed 41 stolen bases last year, the most in the Majors, and the most in Baltimore history. There’s obvious necessary context in any historic numbers like that, given the 2023 rule changes that made stealing bases easier, but “allowed the most steals in the Majors in 2024” requires no such explanation. No one was easier to advance against.

But there’s so much context required in evaluating steal attempts, like if the runner was fast, or the leads were good, or the catcher can or can’t throw. Thankfully, we can go beyond just “most steals allowed” and into some advanced Statcast metrics, which show, perhaps unsurprisingly, that Burnes allowed the most advances on the bases of anyone.

Fewest base advances prevented vs. avg, pitchers, 2024

• -21, Burnes
• -12, Edwin Díaz
• -12, MacKenzie Gore
• -10, Kevin Gausman
• -9, Patrick Corbin
• -8, Mitch Spence
• -8, Adam Ottavino
• -8, Hunter Brown

“Holding a runner on” means preventing them from advancing, and that’s what this is saying -- being minus-21 here means he allowed 24 more advances than the average pitcher, given his situations, and in return only got three more outs than the average pitcher would have. On the other hand, someone who was very good at this -- like Shota Imanaga of the Cubs -- was plus-8, meaning that Burnes was nearly 30 base advances weaker than the best of the best.

That’s steals, sure. But it’s not all steals, either. To start with, on three different occasions, Burnes allowed a free base by trying a third pickoff throw and failing to get the runner, tied for the most in baseball. Those aren’t steals, but they are free bases given, which all count. So what’s behind all of this? There’s a lot of moving parts, so let’s break it down.

Is it his catchers?
Probably not.

Baltimore catchers had a 20% caught stealing percentage, which is essentially average (the Majors had a 21% caught stealing rate) -- and that would have been nearly 24% with Burnes removed. Both Adley Rutschman (+1 CS above avg) and James McCann (+0) rated as average in the advanced Statcast metrics, which account for a runner’s speed and distance, and Burnes threw to them about evenly anyway.

Were the other O’s pitchers poor at this?
Not really.

If all Baltimore pitchers were bad across the board, it might point to something beyond Burnes, but it’s not this, either. While Craig Kimbrel (-7 base advances prevented) was as poor at this as he usually is, the rest of the O’s pitchers rated from roughly average to actually pretty good, in Grayson Rodriguez’s case. It’s a Burnes-specific issue.

Why was he poor?
It’s mostly about big leads, and the willingness of runners to try.

Consider this: When runners at first (in steal opportunities) take a lead off of Burnes, they get off to a 10.4 foot lead, which is relatively average. By the time he releases the pitch, they’re up to 15.5 feet off first, which is a fraction of a foot off of being the largest lead allowed in baseball. Take the difference -- 5.1 feet of distance gained while the pitcher is in motion -- and it’s essentially tied for the largest amount of lead distance gained. That’s a lot of ground covered, and bad situations for his catchers.

You can really see it in action here, when Seiya Suzuki -- an outfielder with good but hardly elite speed -- stole in July. McCann had a good throw from his knees, with a strong 1.94 second pop time, but because Suzuki was 26 feet off of first when the ball was released, there was hardly anything the catcher could do about it.

It was the same thing earlier in the year when William Contreras gained 19 feet during Burnes’s motion, and is 33 feet off first base by the time the ball comes out, giving Rutschman no prayer of throwing him out. (In the catcher version of this metric, Rutschman was given a mere 3% chance of catching the runner, meaning that while he had to eat the one stolen base allowed, he was barely dinged in Statcast’s metrics, because of the opportunity he was given.)

The broadcast video, however, is not sufficient to show you what really happened. If we look at the Statcast 3D version, look at Contreras dancing behind Burnes. Look how far he gets without Burnes even looking -- and then stops, because you assume the pitcher must have noticed -- before taking off when he realized he was in the clear.

It’s because of that knowledge -- that you can get big leads here -- that runners were simply more aggressive on Burnes compared to most pitchers. While it may not seem like a lot that potential base stealers made an attempt on 6% of the pitches they had an opportunity to do so, it was actually third-highest in baseball behind Nick Nastrini and Adam Ottavino, long known for his weakness here.

Why did he get worse?
It wasn’t always like this for Burnes.

This is the key for any team looking to sign Burnes for next year, because he wasn’t that bad at this with Milwaukee. He was, at times, even good. In all of 2022 -- again, under the old rules -- he allowed only five stolen bases, and it wasn’t because Brewer catchers Omar Narváez and Victor Caratini were elite throwers; they rated as average, similar to Burnes’s 2024 Orioles backstops.

It’s partially because runners were far more willing to test him; note that the attempt rate nearly tripled from 2023. It’s also because he was allowing more distance during his motion, an entire foot more than he was giving up in his last year with Milwaukee, and in a sport where inches means everything, that could be the difference. Of course, this might not matter as much as it seems, anyway; it's not like Burnes wasn't successful, and -21 bases prevented comes out to all of three runs of value lost, which is minimal.

The question, then, remains open: Did the Orioles instruct him not to even worry about it, and focus on the batter at the plate? Or did Burnes suddenly get worse at a skill he seemed to possess previously? Whether this keeps up in 2025 will go a long way towards providing an answer.