8-8-2025 – By Michael Castrignano – @412DoublePlay on X
Pittsburgh piled on Brady Singer in game 1 and will look to continue their offensive outburst with today’s starter – a much different type of pitcher than Singer – rookie righty, Chase Burns, who may be off his game after an abbreviated outing last weekend that was shortened by rain on the racetrack.
Burns has had an unceremonious entrance to the show, posting a 6.04 ERA and 1.48 WHIP through 7 starts with 47 strikeouts to 12 walks over 28.1 major league innings but is still only recently removed from being a highly touted pitching prospect, ranking as high as #11 on MLB Pipeline before his debut in June and peaking at #2 prior to his graduation from prospect status last month.
The Reds rookie is among the best in MLB since his debut at both generating whiffs and getting opponents to chase (no pun intended) – as well as overall generating strikeouts with the 3rd highest K rate (36.4%) since his debut for starting pitchers with at least 20 innings pitched in that time behind just Tarik Skubal (38.3%) and fellow NL Central rookie, Jacob Misiorowski (39.6%).
Burns features one of the hardest fastballs in MLB, averaging at 98.4 MPH and reaching triple digits at times, working in a low-90s slider that gets some ugly looking swings as it dives down to the back foot on lefties.
While Burns has taken lumps in the early going, Burns has started to turn things around more recently, notably generating 21 whiffs in his game against the Dodgers last week where he struck out 10 over 5.2 innings against the defending champions.
He will mix in an infrequent changeup in the low-90s but it’s mostly the fastball/slider combo. Lefties have been having success against his heater, batting .296 against the heater with a .382 wOBA – both the highest among any offerings from Burns.
Righties have also found success against the fastball with a .300 batting average and .315 wOBA when seeing Chase’s heater but hitters from both sides of the plate are struggling against his slider, posting a meager .213 batting average against it and whiffing at a 44.3% clip.
He is typically going to work up in the zone with the fastball and pivot to the slider to get swings-and-misses to finish off opponents. Key for the Bucs bats today will be gearing up for the high heat and laying off the breaking ball, especially as he uses the fastball 58.5% of the time.
Timing up the pitch though? Well, that’s another matter entirely.
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