RADIO
Corbin Burnes 2023 Player Outlook: Still An Ace
2 years agoIt was not reasonable to expect a repeat of the Cy Young season Burnes gave us in 2021, and indeed that repeat did not come to fruition. Burnes' lost more than half of a point on the ERA and saw his strikeout rate drop five points. Despite those losses, Burnes still delivered an "ace" season, putting up a 3.07 ERA with a 0.97 WHIP and a 30.5% K% across his 33 starts. There were no changes to his pitch mix, and his cutter remained one of the game's best pitches, racking up a superb 17.4% swinging-strike rate. A lot of the bloating in the ERA came from a five-start stretch later in the year where he put up a 5.29 ERA while giving up a very unusually high home rate for him (1.7 HR/9 over that stretch). Even during that bad stretch, he was posting a K%-BB% above 20%, which is great. There are no good reasons to doubt Burnes is still one of the game's best, and he can be drafted with confidence to anchor your fantasy team's rotation in 2023 - you might even get a slight discount on him this season!
