MLB News: Corbin Burnes, Diamondbacks reportedly agree to 6-year, $210M contract | News, results, highlights, stats and rumours

Four-time All-Star Corbin Burnes is on the road for the second straight season after agreeing to a deal with the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Sore New York Post’s Jon HeymanBurnes will sign a six-year, $210 million contract with the Diamondbacks in free agency. Heyman also reported that the contract includes an opt-out after two years

Burnes spent the 2024 season with the Baltimore Orioles after being acquired from the Milwaukee Brewers shortly before the start of spring training.

The Orioles were in desperate need of a frontline starter who could provide pitching support for their wealth of position player talent.

Burnes more than lived up to his end of the bargain in Baltimore. He ranked seventh in the AL with 3.7 FanGraphs wins above replacement after posting a 2.92 ERA with 181 strikeouts over 194.1 innings in 32 starts.

Last season marked the fourth straight year that Burnes was named to the All-Star team. He was the starting pitcher for the AL in the Midsummer Classic, opposite Pittsburgh Pirates phenom Paul Skenes for the NL.

Burnes has also finished in the top 10 in Cy Young voting for five consecutive years, including winning the award in 2021 with the Brewers.

If there’s a potential concern going forward, aside from the usual injury risks that come with being an MLB pitcher, Burnes’ strikeout rates have declined in each of the last four seasons.

After a career-high 13.3 strikeouts per nine innings during the shortened 2020 season, Burnes’ rates have gone from 12.6 to 10.8 to 9.3 to 8.4. He started at such a high level that even his worst rate in this stretch is very good.

That doesn’t mean there’s any indication that Burnes’ stuff is slowing down. He ranked in the 80th percentile or better in average exit velocity, chase percentage, walk percentage, hard-hit percentage and groundball percentage last season.

At just 30, Burnes should have several more years in his prime. Diamondbacks lands the best free-agent starting pitcher on the market, someone who can more than hold his own in Game 1 of a playoff series.