Milwaukee Burn(e)s a Bridge

Arbitration is by definition a contentious process, but even so, it’s difficult to recall a recent case that left a star player so vocal about the damage done to his relationship with his team like that of Corbin Burnes. Last week, the Brewers went to trial with the 2021 NL Cy Young winner over a difference of just under $750,000 and prevailed, after which Burnes sounded off over the team’s conduct during the hearing. In all likelihood, this marks the beginning of the end of his time in Milwaukee; it’s difficult to imagine him agreeing to any kind of deal that would delay his free agency after what just transpired.

The 28-year-old Burnes has been the majors’ most valuable pitcher over the past three seasons according to our version of WAR:

Among pitchers with at least 300 innings in that span, Burnes also owns the lowest FIP and K-BB% (26.9%, virtually tied with Scherzer), and is second in strikeout rate and ERA (again in a virtual tie with Scherzer). It’s been a pretty good run, to say the least. That said, his 2022 campaign couldn’t quite live up to the high standards he set in 2021, as his strikeout rate receded and his home run rate nearly tripled:

Even so, Burnes led the NL in strikeouts (243) and starts (33) and placed third in K-BB%, fourth in innings, fifth in WAR, eighth in FIP and 10th in ERA. He made the NL All-Star team for the second season in a row and received Cy Young votes for the third time, finishing seventh; one voter had him as high as second, two more in third, and a total of 12 (out of 30) considered him among the league’s top five.

When Burnes became eligible for arbitration for the first time last year, he and the Brewers quickly agreed to a $6.5 million salary once the lockout was settled — a salary that was more than an order of magnitude higher than the $608,000 he made during his Cy Young-winning season. On the basis of his strong 2022, he was projected for an $11.4 million salary via Matt Swartz’ model for MLB Trade Rumors. Even while failing to reach agreement on a salary for 2023 before the January 13 arbitration deadline, however, Burnes and his camp (he’s represented by CAA Sports) didn’t shoot quite that high, instead requesting $10.75 million. The Brewers countered with $10.01 million, a salary that — perhaps not so coincidentally — matched what 2020 AL Cy Young winner Shane Bieber, who like Burnes has four-plus years of service time (4.097 to Burnes’ 4.049), had agreed to.

On a percentage basis, the 7.4% gap between the two sides was the third-smallest of the 33 players who exchanged figures with their teams. The only smaller gaps were those of Gleyber Torres (5.2%, between his $10.2 million request and the Yankees’ $9.7 million offer) and Hunter Renfroe (5.8%, between his $11.9 million request and the Angels’ $11.25 million offer). Torres and the Yankees wisely split the difference at $9.95 million before going to trial, and Renfroe won his case.

Burnes did not, and in his words, he came out of the hearing disappointed less with the loss itself — he still received a 54% raise — than with the team’s approach to the negotiations and the trial. In his telling, the Brewers didn’t make much of an attempt to avoid a hearing, offering a two-year deal that he characterized to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel’s Todd Rosiak as as “pretty poor.” He added, “From the way we’ve viewed it, it was better off to really take the number that the club had filed at than take a two-year deal that they had offered. And frankly, it almost kind of made the situation worse with what was presented.”

Here’s more of what Burnes told reporters afterwards:

“You work hard for seven years in the organization and five years with the big-league team, and you get in there and basically they value you much different than what you thought you’d contributed to the organization. Obviously, it’s tough to hear, it’s tough to take, but they’re trying to do what they can to win a hearing. But I think there were obviously other ways that they could have gone about it and probably been a little more respectful with the way they went about it.

“I mean, there’s there’s no denying that the relationship was definitely hurt from what (transpired) over the last couple of weeks. There’s really no way to get around that…. We’re professionals, and we’re going to go out there and do our job and keep doing what I can every fifth day that I go out there. But when some of the things that are said — for instance, they basically put me in the forefront of the reason why we didn’t make the postseason last year — that’s something that probably doesn’t need to be said.

And some video:

Every fear that going to an arbitration hearing against Corbin Burnes could harm his relationship with the Brewers was founded.

“There’s no denying that the relationship is definitely hurt from what [transpired],” Burnes said. pic.twitter.com/Xv8DFyiKde

— Adam McCalvy (@AdamMcCalvy) February 16, 2023

If the Brewers blamed Burnes for missing the playoffs, that’s some real chutzpah. At 86–76, they fell one win short of the Phillies’ 87–75 for the third NL Wild Card spot, but Philadelphia owned the tiebreaker, so Milwaukee would have needed 88 wins to secure the berth. Chalking up the miss to the team’s most valuable pitcher is way off base. When Burnes made his penultimate start of the season on September 30, the Brewers (then 83–73) were half a game behind the Phillies (83–72) for the final NL Wild Card spot; he threw eight shutout innings against the Marlins in a 1–0 win, but the Phillies won as well. By the time his turn came up again on the final day of the season, he and his team had been eliminated.

Dialing back, the Brewers were three games out of the last Wild Card spot when September opened, and while they went 4–2 in Burnes’ pre-elimination starts (in which he posted a 3.54 ERA and 3.01 FIP), they scored a total of three runs in those two losses. In the bigger picture, the Brewers gave 599 plate appearances to Rowdy Tellez, who produced just 0.8 WAR, and 580 PA to Andrew McCutchen, who produced just 0.3 WAR. Between those dead spots in the lineup, multiple slides elsewhere in the rotation after Freddy Peralta‘s shoulder strain, and Josh Hader’s pre-trade meltdown and its aftermath, there were no shortage of reasons why the Brewers came up short. The ace’s regression from Cy-caliber to All-Star–caliber is, at best (or worst), pretty far down the list.

In a statement issued by the team, Brewers general manager Matt Arnold made no mention of blaming Burnes, though he did acknowledge the general discomfort of the situation, saying, “The arbitration process always presents uncomfortable situations for both the club and player involved. It is never easy to present a case against a member of the Brewers family. I’d like to reiterate that we view Corbin as one of the leaders of our franchise and value him as an elite talent in the game.”

Again, quibbling over an amount that’s just $29,000 more than the 2023 minimum salary suggests otherwise, particularly with the Brewers in cost-cutting mode. Roster Resource projects them for a $120 million payroll in 2023, down from $137 million last year.

As to what Burnes might be worth, I asked Dan Szymborski to provide a ZiPS projection, then honed in on the righty’s 2023 and ’24 projections as well as the contract suggestions that go along with them. Here’s how those two years look:

Those last two columns with the dollar signs are the value of Burnes’ performance as if he were a free agent, then discounted for arbitration.

As you can see, by Dan’s model, ZiPS projects Burnes to earn $11.1 million for this year once his arbitration is accounted for, but he fell over $1 million short of that. The value of his two-year projection with the arbitration discounts baked in comes to $28.4 million, well under half of the $69.8 million he was projected to earn as a free agent. If you need another reminder of the way the deck is stacked against arbitration-eligible players, you’ve got one there. Getting back to his 2021 salary of $608,000, we might as well note that FanGraphs’ valuation formula credits Burnes with providing the Brewers $59.7 million worth of value. In other words, he was worth 98 times what he was being paid.

Here’s the full ZiPS projection for Burnes:

Beyond this year, that comes out to a nine-year deal for Burnes’ ages 29–37 seasons, one that would be worth $220.7 million if he were a free agent ($24.5 million average annual value) and $204 million when accounting for his final year of arbitration ($22.67 million AAV). Considering only the final eight free-agent years, that comes to a total of $186.7 million ($23.34 million AAV).

Pitching contracts rarely run that long, for good reason: pitcher health is so hard to predict that far down the road. Gerrit Cole’s nine-year deal is the only current or recent one that’s gone beyond seven years. And while we’ve seen several deals this winter that stretch beyond seven years so as to dilute the impact of a high AAV (11 years for Trea Turner and Xander Bogaerts, nine for Aaron Judge, eight for Brandon Nimmo), all of those have been for position players. Carlos Rodón’s six-year, $162 million contract is the only one since Cole’s deal (signed in December 2019) to go longer than five years — and both came from the Yankees.

In that light, it’s probably a bridge too far to project Burnes for longer than seven years, and perhaps even for longer than five. Even so, we can imagine what a some fair shorter-term deals for Burnes might have looked like, in part to illustrate the impact of having two years worth of arbitration weighing down that AAV. First, here’s a look at some possibilities for Burnes if he had signed a long-term deal this offseason:

The first set of figures shows what he might have received had he been a free agent; by AAV, he likely would have blown past Rodon’s $27 million, to say nothing of the $23 million (five years, $115 million) given last year to Cy Young winner Robbie Ray and his more erratic track record. Depending upon the length, his AAVs could have been $5.9 million to $10.4 million higher without the arbitration salaries weighing him down. Even accounting for those two arbitration years, Burnes’ projected AAVs top not only Ray but also Zack Wheeler ($23.6 million) and Marcus Stroman ($23.67 million), though they fall short of several older deals that averaged $25 million and above.

Now here’s a comparison between the full value and arbitration value of deals that would start next year, either if the Brewers were to reverse course and offer him a long-term deal (go on, we all need a laugh) or if, say, a team acquiring him in trade were to hammer out an extension with him:

Here the impact of the arbitration year is much smaller, cutting $2.4 to $4.2 million off the AAV depending upon the deal’s length. At full value, those AAVs approach the bygone deals of several top-tier pitchers such as Scherzer, David Price, and Clayton Kershaw, but those were signed long enough ago to have run their course. As for their value including the arb year, they still top Rodón and Ray and would trail only Kershaw’s $30.714 million AAV and Shohei Ohtani’s $30 million among those for a pitcher with five-plus years of service time; the former ran from 2014 to ’20 and was superseded by an opt-out, and the latter, to the two-way superstar, is just for this coming season.

Anyway, it’s hardly breaking news that the drag of arbitration costs younger players a whole lot of money, but in this case, it’s still worth measuring, particularly as Burnes seems to occupy an in-between spot in the pitching landscape. He projects to be worth more than several recent free agents but isn’t yet at the level where he’s enough of a proven commodity to bring home a salary on the level of Cole or deGrom.

The two years between now and Burnes’ free agency leave enough time for a lot to go wrong, and right now that timespan must feel like an eternity. Given the Brewers’ actions and Burnes’ reaction, it seems highly unlikely that he would accept any kind of offer that would delay his free agency, and while circumstances may change, it’s not hard to believe that this situation portends a trade down the road, either this summer if the Brewers are out of contention or next winter if he does spend the year with them. Maybe things would have worked out that way even if the Brewers had struck a short-term deal with Burnes instead of going to trial and stirring up bad feelings, but we’ll never know.