Corbin Burnes: The Second Coming Of Roy Halladay?
In professional sports, especially baseball, athletes are taught to maximize their strengths. Power hitters? Hit the ball farther. Flamethrowers? Throw the ball harder. Hansel Robles? Point at your home runs more emphatically (just in case anyone missed that bomb).
Conversely, when athletes at the professional level struggle, they are taught to trust the ability that got them to where they are. If they don’t perform? Keep doing what they’re doing, except better.
But sometimes, an athlete chooses a different route; they the monotony of repetition for the sake of incremental improvement, and decide to revamp entirely. That’s what 25-year-old Corbin Burnes did, and the success is impressive.
Who is Corbin Burnes? He’s one of the best Wisconsin Timber Rattlers in recent memory, a less than forgettable Carolina Mudcat, and practically a hall of fame Biloxi Shucker. But most importantly, he’s an up-and-coming pitcher for the Milwaukee Brewers. Ranked as the #2 prospect in the system by both MLB.com and Fangraphs, the franchise was hoping Burnes could have an impact as soon as possible. And after throwing nine high leverage innings in the 2018 playoffs with only two earned runs, he earned the trust of the Brewers to be a starter the next year.
So, why did he revamp? Well, Burnes had a very poor 2019. His job as a starter did not go as planned, lasting only four starts – and those four appearances included eleven home runs and an ERA ballooning above 10 in 17.2 innings. After an additional 31.1 innings out of the bullpen, he ended the year with 70 hits, 70 strikeouts, and -.3 fWAR (Fangraphs WAR) in 49 innings.
Burnes also finished his nightmare of a 2019 with a total BABIP of .414, an ERA of 8.82, FIP of 6.07, and xFIP of 3.37. Why are you looking at one of the most ridiculous disparities between FIP and xFIP? Mostly because out of all the pitchers in the league who threw 45 innings minimum, Burnes’ HR/FB rate of 38.6% was the highest by almost 10%.
Was Burnes due for positive regression? Absolutely. But, would tell your manager that next year will go much smoother if you just do everything the exact same way you did this year? The same year where, according to Baseball Savant, you were in the bottom 1% of the league in wOBA and bottom 3% in barrel rate? I don’t imagine that would go well.
What necessary changes did Burnes’ need to make? For starters (figuratively and literally), his repertoire was not diverse. A whopping 83.5% of his pitches were either fastballs or sliders. Burnes’ slider was the love bright spot in 2019: he threw it 31% of the time, had a wOBA of .221, and it accumulated 4.5 wSL (Slider runs above average) according to Brooks Baseball. Unfortunately, his four-seam fastball was genuinely terrible. And thrown 52.5% of the time, had a wOBA of .533, and a shocking -17.3 wFB (Four-seam fastball runs above average). Despite articles written about his godly fastball spin rate, it was clear that effectiveness was another story altogether.
Secondly, it was clear that Burnes had no idea how to throw to lefties. He featured his abysmal four-seamer 58.6% of the time to the tune of .578 wOBA. Burnes’ slider, curveball, and changeup were thrown 15.9%, 13.3%, and 8.4% of the time, respectively, and even though his changeup had small success against lefty batters, the sample size was too low to impact his success against them. Over the course of 83 at-bats, lefty hitters racked up a batting average of almost .400, wOBA of .514, and an OPS of 1.271. And even though 83 batters was about 39% of his total hitters faced in 2019, he gave up 85% of his walks and 47% of his home runs during those at-bats. Burnes’ xFIP may have been 3.37 on this season, but it was 5.81 against left-handed hitters, and he needed to transform his approach to them as soon as possible.
To sum up, the immediate issues that needed to be addressed were pitch variety, effectiveness against left-handed batters, and a terrible four-seamer. Did he work on all three? It’d be a really bad article if he didn’t, so I’m really glad that he did.
When it comes to pitch variety, Burnes did a complete 180. In 2019, he threw two pitches more than 9% of the time, but in 2020, he threw five pitches more than 9%, and none of them were four-seam fastballs. How is that even possible? Burnes’ cutter and sinker combined for 4.6% of his pitches in 2019, but combined for 64.4% of his pitches in 2020. Maintaining his elite spin rate on both pitches, Burnes’ opted to replace his four-seam fastball with two pitches of similar velocity, but with movement to boot.
Burnes’ slider, changeup, and curveball seem to have all blossomed alongside his cutter and sinker. With the slider being thrown 12.3% of the time, and curveball thrown 9.1% of the time, both have wOBAs of under .085 and expected batting averages of under .100. The changeup he throws 11.2% of the time has a wOBA of .181, but has had a much greater impact on his season than the other off-speed pitches, and for good reason.
As mentioned before, Burnes’ surrendered a wOBA of .514, and an OPS of 1.271 against left-handed batters over 83 at-bats. In 2020, Burnes’ turned his lefty splits inside out, achieving a wOBA of .263 and OPS of .581 over 120 at-bats. And that terrible 2019 xFIP of 5.81 against lefties? Yeah, that turned into an xFIP of 3.11 in 2020.
How does a turn around like that happen so quickly? Simple: Burnes’ has a new approach and an improved arsenal to back it up. Attacking lefties with cutters 41% of the time, sinkers 25.2% of the time, changeups 18.4% of the time, and curveball 10% of the time is drastically different than the 2019 approach of throwing almost 60% of four-seam fastballs against them. Additionally, Burnes’ walk rate against left-handed hitters went from 16.7% in 2019 to 10.4% in 2020, a 38% decrease on the strength of better pitch selection.
Burnes’ cutter breaks in on the hands, sinker shows late break low in the zone, changeup disguises itself as either fastball variant until it slowly drifts down and away, and wipeout curveball in the 95th percentile of spin rate have provided a great new look against lefties. Are these pitches considered elite by league standards? According to Baseball Savant’s visual pitch report, not really. The only notable thing about these pitches is that Burnes’ cutter breaks 5 inches compared to the league average of 3 inches. Meaning it’s likely that the combination that is what has led to Burnes’ success.
Before I use Burnes’ last twelve starts as justification to compare him to one of my favorite pitchers of all time, I want to stress how interesting his new approach is. In 2020, Burnes throws his cutter and sinker a lot, combining for 61.8% vs. righties and 66.2% vs. lefties. Even though he uses more cutters against lefties and sinkers against righties, there is not much difference in how they total up together, but when it comes to throwing his slider and changeup, there is an extreme difference.
Burnes’ throws his slider 12.3% on the year, and 91.1% of those sliders are thrown against right-handed batters, while his changeup is thrown 11.2% of the time, and 96.5% of those changeups are against left-handed hitters. Burnes’ curveball seems like it is just an extra option against lefty batters, throwing it 9.1% of the time with 64% usage against lefties, probably unnecessary against righties because of how elite his slider has been since 2019. Burnes expanding his repertoire to have 4 pitches to throw at any time against either a righty or a lefty, as opposed to just a four-seam and a slider, has been game-changing to say the least.
Something also worth noting is the speed difference between the pitches. A sinker at 96 mph, cutter at 93.1 mph, changeup at 88.9 mph, slider at 86.6 mph, and curveball at 81.1 mph shows a lot of variance. In other words, when Corbin Burnes throws you a pitch in 2020, the ball is guaranteed to have movement and move differently than any of his other pitches. Drastically different than Burnes’ 2019 season, where there was an 83.5% chance the pitch lacked movement or was a slider. This 2020 Burnes is a new pitcher.
Being surprised that Burnes’ ditched his four-seam completely and opted for the fastball by committee option manned by cutter and sinker, it got me to start thinking about other great pitchers who saw increased success by ditching their four-seam completely. Specifically, pitchers who primarily worked off their cutter and sinker, with a wipeout off-speed pitch to finish the job. One name came to mind: Roy Halladay.
First let me say: Rest in Peace, Roy Halladay. To compare anybody to a legend of Halladay’s stature after twelve starts would be silly, but I can explain. And no, it’s not because Halladay and Burnes are #1 and #2 in the biggest year-to-year ERA declines in history with a minimum of 45 innings pitched. Roy’s ERA declining from 10.64 to 3.16, while Burnes’ ERA from 8.82 to 1.99. But unlike Burnes, Halladay experienced good success before removing his four-seam from his arsenal – winning his first Cy Young award in 2003 – but once he completely removed his four-seam, he somehow got better.
Halladay had a great year in 2007 for most pitchers, but it was arguably his worst year since his award-winning 2003 season. Halladay’s wCL (Cutter runs above average) went from 3.9 in 2006, to 20.5 in 2007, more than a 5.25x increase in effectiveness by that metric. Going into 2008, he completely removed his four-seam from his arsenal, throwing less than .2% per year for the rest of his career after throwing about 8% in 2007. Halladay’s cutter went from 29.1% to 41.6% usage after he removed four-seam was removed, and the rest was history.
Halladay’s fWAR in 2006 and 2007 both equaled 5.1, but after getting rid of his four-seam and throwing more cutters, Halladay’s next four seasons involved fWARs of 6.7, 6.8, 6.2, and 8.7. These years featured one Cy Young and two runner ups, but Kershaw won when Halladay had 8.7 WAR total, meaning he had 1.4 fWAR and 2.0 bWAR (Baseball-Reference’s WAR) more than Kershaw.
Am I crazy for thinking that Burnes has a good shot of emulating Halladay’s success? Absolutely. But hey, Roy Halladay and Corbin Burnes both shared breakout seasons at the age of 25 using the same type of pitches, and Halladay won his first Cy Young the year after that. Corbin Burnes found an approach that has shown more than promising results, and if these are the results of someone who is throwing some of his pitches regularly for the first time in his career, then the future strides in his game could become even scarier than Halladay’s were.x
