The Cincinnati Reds are calling up top prospect Chase Burns to start against the New York Yankees on Tuesday. This was first reported by C. Trent Rosecrans of The Athletic.
Less than a year ago the Reds selected Chase Burns with the #2 overall draft pick and then gave him the largest signing bonus in the history of the draft. Given a long season at Wake Forest in 2024, Burns didn’t pitch after being drafted.
Cincinnati surprised many people by assigning Burns to the High-A Dayton Dragons to begin his professional career. As a dominant starting pitcher in 2024 at Wake Forest who was seen as both polished and a guy with elite stuff who should rocket his way through the farm system, an assignment to A-ball felt strange. The 22-year-old only made three starts with Dayton before being moved up to Double-A Chattanooga. While with the Lookouts he would go on to make eight starts and posted a 1.29 ERA in 42.0 innings. During that time he also struck out 55 batters and had just four walks.
Dominant isn’t the best word to describe it but I don’t know of a word that best suited for “whatever is better than dominant”. His performance in Double-A with the Lookouts earned him another promotion and two weeks ago he landed in Triple-A to join the Louisville Bats rotation. His first start was solid, but he walked four batters in 5.1 innings and gave up two runs in his debut. On Thursday he made his second start for Louisville and things went a lot better as he allowed one run in 7.0 innings without a walk and with seven strikeouts.
All told this season, Chase Burns made 13 starts across three levels and threw 66.0 innings. In that time he gave up just 38 hits, walked just 13 batters, and he struck out 89 of the 242 hitters that he faced (36.8% strikeout rate).
He may have begun the season in a place that was lower than expected but he still got to the big leagues before the first half of the season was over. At least in terms of his minor league career, he not only did what was expected of him when he was drafted, but he probably exceeded those expectations.
Chase Burns brings a fastball in the upper 90’s to the table and he’s routinely touched triple digits, but that’s not even his best pitch. That honor goes to his wipeout slider that works 86-92 MPH. But Burns isn’t just a 2-pitch guy. He also throws a change up in the upper 80’s to low 90’s and a curveball in the low-to-mid 80’s. In his two Triple-A starts where pitch tracking data is available he threw his change up 13% of the time and his curveball 8% of the time to go along with his fastball (47%) and slider (32%).
What move the Reds will make on Tuesday to get Chase Burns onto the 40-man roster hasn’t been announced, or perhaps even decided yet. Neither has the move to get him onto the 26-man roster.
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