Diamondbacks' Corbin Burnes Discusses Injury After Early Removal

The skipper said his concern level was "more than [minimal]," but that he was going to remain "as optimistic as possible."

Burnes later spoke to reporters, including Diamondbacks On SI's Jack Sommers about the potential injury.

"It just kind of really started to get tight on me," Burnes said. "Obviously saw the velo starting to drop and the movement of the pitches was not where we wanted it to be, so we got to the point there in the fifth inning, tried two or three times to put away Abrams and just couldn't do it.

"Just got to the point where the tightness was too much, so waved [the trainer] out and didn't feel like we needed to push any farther. So hopefully we caught it early, hopefully it's not bad. But we'll see," Burnes said.

The concern, of course, with elbow injuries of this nature, is the dreaded Tommy John surgery — a procedure that would end Burnes' 2025 season on the spot.

At this time, no official diagnosis is available. Burnes did, however, tell reporters that he did not feel a "pop," or feel the discomfort arise from one particular pitch.

"There was no one pitch, or pop, or anything that happened. Which I think is, for me, what I'm hopeful to that it wasn't one certain pitch," Burnes said.

"It just kind of gradually got tight over the last couple of innings. It stings because I've been throwing the ball really well. It felt like it was starting to get really good too, especially those first couple of innings. Stuff was starting to really be where we wanted it to be.

"Obviously, that's tough, but like I said, we'll see what happens and go from there," the ace continued.

Burnes has been anything but injury-prone in his successful eight-year career. Although he did miss one start this season due to shoulder inflammation, he has thrown near or over 200 innings in all of his past three seasons. He's started over 30 games each of the past three years and has never suffered a severe elbow injury.

"I've never had anything like it before, so I really have nothing to compare it to or know," he said. "My body does a pretty good job of telling me when I need to not do things and when I can push things, and it'll tell me not to push it.

"Hopefully it was me kind of shutting things down before it got too bad."

Burnes had been in the midst of a seemingly excellent start with six strikeouts through 4.2 innings. Although his velocity had taken a concerning three MPH dive early, he allowed just one earned run in Sunday's start — a bequeathed runner scored by reliever Jalen Beeks.

The ace's season had been looking much closer to the type of season expected from the $210 million arm Arizona signed in the offseason. His ERA sits at an excellent 2.66, and he'd completed seven innings (with less than three earned runs) in three of his previous four starts. Every start in the month of May was Quality Start.

No diagnosis will be known until Monday at the earliest. While he may have avoided potential disaster, there is still reasonable concern that he could miss a large portion (or all) of the remaining 2025 season.

Burnes took a more optimistic approach, but nothing will be known until after the MRI results come in.

"I'm going to hold out hope that the body shut it down before it got too bad," he said.

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