Corbin Burnes on Tacos, Velocity, and His Partnership with Kaplan

Corbin Burnes made his third Spring Training start on Monday afternoon against the Cubs. The Arizona Diamondbacks and him are projecting him to make six starts before the season. This means that's he's now halfway through his progression for getting ready.

Per Burnes, he feels like Spring Training keeps going faster and faster as he gets older, but that he's in a "good spot" in his training. Nor does he focus at all on the numbers he puts up as there are guys fighting for a roster spot or guys just trying to get ready for the season facing him.

What he judges his outings on are how his body feels and how the pitches moved based on what they worked on over the weeks prior to his outing.

It was a solid start overall despite him giving up his first run of Spring Training. He pitched 2.1 innings while throwing 47 pitches over three up-downs which was the plan. He allowed two hits, a run, one walk, and struck out two batters.

During the start, Burnes revealed to reporters, including Jack Sommers, that he was mainly working on his breaking balls today, especially the curveball. He was pleased with how those pitches worked but wasn't pleased with the performance of his sinker and cutter.

In fact his curveball was thrown so well and hard, mid-80s, that it registered as a sweeper on Statcast despite him never throwing a sweeper Monday afternoon.

Those two pitches will be worked on between starts, but that won't happen until after tomorrow's off-day. Tomorrow will be full of "whatever my kid wants to do. When we get back into work on Wednesday, just going to be continuing to hammer stuff."

Burnes spoke about how they saw "good returns" on the curveball and slider Monday so they will continue to "touch" on that while flipping to working on his signature cutter.

As has been written about before on this site, Burnes is very big on establishing relationships with his catcher and the overall catcher-pitcher relationship. That's the biggest relationship in baseball for the team to succeed.

As such, Adrian Del Castillo caught him today and it was the first time he had caught him all Spring. Burnes has primarily worked with Gabriel Moreno.

Speaking about how Del Castillo did, he said, "He's a guy that could see some time out there this year. It's three different catchers that you're trying to work with, so it's tough to establish that relationship with every single one. I thought he did a good job back there today. I let him do it for the most part, shook off a little bit and called some of my own occasionally."

On another lighthearted note, it was revealed that Burnes hired a taco truck to come into the facility to treat his teammates to tacos for lunch recently.

Burnes shared that "that's a company I've used quite a bit. The guys said they like having taco trucks. We do the coffee van in here. So it's just a way to mix things up and get to know the guys a little bit. They're all appreciative. I think everyone at lunchtime gets pretty hungry. It was fun."

As for his taco order, Burnes said, "I'm big [on] carne asada tacos, so I had probably a few too many that day."

It's been noticed that Burnes is hitting upper-90s with his fastball, including reaching 96.9 mph on his sinker Monday.

In 2024, his cutter averaged 95.3 while his sinker averaged 97 mph. That's over the course of a whole season and not just three short starts into his year. But what could be fueling that, and is it typical for Burnes to display this kind of velocity this early into the year?

Burnes credits a lot of it to Brian Kaplan, the D-backs' new pitching coach. "I think this is probably the highest it's been in a couple of years. Not sure why. Could just be that the few mechanical things we've been working on have been cleaning up and velocity's taken off a little bit. It's definitely early in camp for it to be that high, but I'm not going to complain. Everything feels good and mechanically, we feel pretty clean."

As for how it's going working with a new pitching coach, especially a new one to the organization, Burnes said it's a little bit different having a guy who was a private coach to then joining the organizational ranks of baseball but that "he's got some fresh takes on some ideas. And I think a lot of guys have enjoyed working with him."

He further expounded on that with, "He's been great. I had the conversations started kind of early with him once I signed. We've been working together for a few months now, even though camp hasn't been going for that long.

"Some of the things we've worked on have been a combination of me wanting to do some things and him seeing some things. And we've had a good relationship. We've just kind of bounced ideas off each other and seen what sticks. But he's good."

What about the impression Burnes is leaving on people? Prior to the game, manager Torey Lovullo spoke about his impression of Burnes thus far into camp now that it's been a few weeks.

"Professionalism, a commitment, and an understanding of how he fits into this organization, and hopefully leading us in the right direction every single day.

"That's the person. That's the guy that I get to see inside the walls of this clubhouse. I know he's a great husband. He's a great father. He's open. He's genuine. He's sincere. Those are the things that I see overall inside and outside the clubhouse, and then the beautiful thing is the art of pitching.

"He's mastering and continues to master the art of pitching. He gets data. He gets input. He makes adjustments, and he's ready to compete, and for me, that is the ultimate part of this equation. He wants to go out and compete and win baseball games."

The Arizona Diamondbacks are certainly counting on Burnes to be one of the leaders of the team and get them back to the playoffs come October.