Over the past three seasons, Corbin Burnes has evolved into one of the most dominant pitchers in the game. But his mood at the start of the Brewers’ spring training on Thursday struck a more disgruntled tone following a less than pleasant arbitration hearing with the only team he’s ever known.
Milwaukee won its hearing against Burnes, meaning the 2021 National League Cy Young Award winner will make $10.01 million in ’23. Burnes and his camp had asked for $10.75 million, per MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand. In the wake of the hearing, Burnes said he left the experience with a disappointing feeling about how his team values him, taking particular issue with what he felt was “disrespectful” conduct from the Brewers.
“You kind of find out your true value. You work hard for seven years in an 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 contributed to the organization,” Burnes said. “Obviously, it’s tough to hear, it’s tough to take. They’re trying to do what they can to win the hearing. But, I think there was obviously other ways that they could have gone about it, and probably been a little more respectful with the way they went about it. At the end of the day, here we are. They won it.”
When asked about any hard feelings that exist between him and the club that didn’t exist before, Burnes did not hold back when assessing his relationship with the Brewers.
“There’s no denying that the relationship is definitely hurt from what [transpired] over the last couple weeks. There’s really no way of getting around that … ,” Burnes said. “They basically put me at 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, we can go about a hearing without having to do that. There was no attacking of character, of who I was, but just some of the stuff that was said that definitely didn’t need to be said is something that kind of disappointed everyone.”
Burnes, who’s been an All-Star the past two seasons, went 12–8 with a 2.94 ERA and an NL-best 243 strikeouts in 2022, leading the majors with 33 starts
