Corbin Burnes Requests Regular Rest Start from Torey Lovullo

Arizona Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo cleared up the confusion over the starting rotation on Sunday, by naming his rotation order.

Following Zac Gallen on opening day will be Merrill Kelly, Brandon Pfaadt, Eduardo Rodriguez, and Corbin Burnes. Jordan Montgomery and Ryne Nelson will pitch out of the bullpen to start the season. This means that Burnes will not start in the opening series against the Chicago Cubs. His first start will come against the New York Yankees in New York.

The explanation of the rotation order given by Lovullo was as expected. Burnes is a very routine- and process-oriented pitcher. If he were to start the second game of the season, that would entail him pitching on six days rest. His normal routine is to pitch on four days rest, and he's able to adjust to five when off days dictate that. But the second extra day would put Burnes in a place he didn't want to be.

The manager took responsibility for not fully communicating and understanding this as much as he needed to in making his decision on the Opening Day starter and subsequent rotation order. To be clear, Burnes made his preference known, and Lovullo and the staff then had to adjust to that stated preference by the pitcher.

"This was probably a technical error on my part, I'll take the responsibility for that. Corbin is a very routine-oriented player and I've yet to understand that until recently. And he's got a process and I respect that. I blame myself for not getting to know him. How important the routine is day-by-day, hour-by-hour, minute-by-minute, and second-by-second, he is elite in this space.

"So when we stepped into a space where we had to make an adjustment that he wasn't going to start Opening Day, we had to recalibrate and get him on the right routine. And I respect that a hundred percent," Lovullo said.

This issue first came to light when following his last outing on Friday night against the Brewers Burnes said he would throw in one more game prior to the start of the season. (That will be on a backfield at Salt River Fields on Wednesday) Doing the math and counting the days made it obvious that he would then be staying on normal rest and make his first start in New York.

Faced with the choice to accommodate the pitcher's request, rather than force the issue and just push him to make the start on Friday, Lovullo took the long-term view.

"Corbin is that important to me in this organization that I wanted to listen to him. And we listen to our athletes here and he made it loud and clear that through that partnership, this is what was most important to him. He's an elite pitcher with an elite routine that I don't want to get in the way of. So I could have said, you have to, it's just not what I believe in."

At the end of the day, Burnes will likely get his 32 starts this season, health willing, and it will be a non-issue. But at the same time it is a learning experience for the manager, who acknowledges his mistake and detailed what he's doing to correct it.

In the future if there are rainouts, days off, and other events that necessitate pushing the order around, Burnes will be much more in the loop on those decisions.

"As long as he knows in advance, like if he's on the ground floor of the part of the process and I'm going to pull him in and I'm going to talk to him, like, this is what's going on. He'll understand. He will be fine with it," Lovullo said.

Lovullo continued to emphasize that the blame in this situation rests solely with him, and tied that to his elongated process to select the opening day starter.

"While I was taking my time, which I thought was being the most responsible thing, I was, throwing the rhythm off as to the time that we had on the backside of it. So that's where I blame myself."

The Diamondbacks have an extremely strong rotation, and the order doesn't really matter much, especially once you get two weeks into the season. That might not make the fans who bought tickets looking forward to seeing the star pitcher the first weekend of the season feel any better. But the events of this week are unlikely to have any negative impact on the standing.