Reds, Chase Burns Agree To Seven-Year Extension

Still just 23 years old, Burns has broken out as one of the best pitchers in baseball. The former Wake Forest standout has started 18 games, totaled 102 2/3 innings, and pitched to a pristine 2.54 earned run average in his first full season at the big league level. He’s punched out 28.6% of his opponents against a 9% walk rate. Burns is a fly-ball pitcher in a homer-friendly park, but he’s managed to avoid hard contact nicely and surrendered an average of only 1.05 homers per nine frames this year.

Listed at 6’3″ and 210 pounds, Burns has a prototypical starter’s frame and the sort of high-octane arsenal required to front a big league rotation. He’s averaged a blazing 97.8 mph on his heater this season, pairing the pitch with a devastating slider that sits 90.5 mph and a show-me changeup with similar velocity that he’s only thrown at a 5.7% clip this year. Opponents have chased nearly 34% of Burns’ pitches outside the strike zone. Their overall contact rate (71%) is six points shy of the league-average 77%. Burns’ 14.1% swinging-strike rate is three percentage points higher than average. Opposing batters simply aren’t able to make consistent contact with his overpowering repertoire.

Burns’ four-seamer and slider are his bread and butter. He could use a more effective changeup to help him keep lefties off balance, but southpaw hitters haven’t exactly lit him up. They’ve batted .214/.307/.409. He’ll run into some occasional trouble against lefties — 10 of the 12 long balls he’s surrendered have been versus left-handed opponents — but they haven’t posed any sort of egregious problem thus far. Meanwhile, right-handed opponents should hardly even bother stepping into the box. They’re hitting just .195/.230/.286 in 161 plate appearances this season.

Cincinnati selected Burns with the No. 2 overall pick back in 2024. He was in the majors less than a year later, making his debut on June 24, 2025. He didn’t dominate in 2025 but held his own, logging a 4.57 ERA with a gaudy 35.6% strikeout rate in 43 1/3 innings during that debut campaign. Burns finished the 2025 season in relief as Cincinnati monitored his workload, but the signs of a potentially dominant arm were there. He fanned 10 opponents four times despite never topping six innings in an appearance, and he closed out the year with only three runs allowed and a 22-to-4 K/BB ratio over his final 16 frames.

Burns’ contract is the largest ever signed by a pitcher with fewer than four years of major league service. The mere fact that it’s a precedent-setter illustrates the risk-averse approach teams take to signing young pitchers. Top position prospects like Colt Emerson ($95MM), Konnor Griffin ($140MM) and Kevin McGonigle ($150MM) received massive paydays this season with barely any major league experience at all (literally none, in Emerson’s case). Pitchers, on the other hand, rarely receive weighty long-term contracts.

A look at MLBTR’s Contract Tracker shows that prior to today’s deal, the largest contract extension for a pitcher with fewer than four years of service was Logan Webb‘s five-year, $90MM deal, which he signed in April 2023. Burns now becomes just the ninth pitcher ever to sign a $100MM+ contract prior to accruing six years of service and reaching free agency.

Burns now cements himself at the top of the Reds’ rotation alongside a player whom Cincinnati also selected second overall (albeit seven years prior): Hunter Greene. Greene missed the first several months of the season recovering from surgery to remove a loose body from his elbow, but from 2024-25 he gave the Reds 258 innings with a 2.76 ERA, a 29.2% strikeout rate and an 8.1% walk rate. Like Burns, Greene is a flamethrowing righty who leans primarily on a four-seam/slider combo with seldom-used offerings (splitter, sinker) to round out his arsenal. As they did with Burns, the Reds extended Greene early in his career. He’s locked in through 2029: $15MM next season, $16MM in 2028 and a $21MM club option ($2MM buyout) for 2029.

So long as they remain healthy, Burns and Greene will form one of the more imposing one-two punches in the game. The Reds have a nice supporting cast of controllable arms behind them; Andrew Abbott, Nick Lodolo, Rhett Lowder and Chase Petty are all controlled beyond the 2026 season. The latter two have yet to establish themselves in the majors but are former first-round picks and top prospects. Abbott and Lodolo could see their names arise in trade rumors over the next two-plus weeks or in the offseason. The Reds are nine games under .500, last place in the NL Central and eight games back in the Wild Card hunt. Abbott is controlled three more years beyond the current season, but Lodolo is controlled only through 2027.

As shown in MLBTR’s newly rolled-out Payroll Tracker, the Reds had just three guaranteed contracts (Greene, Ke’Bryan Hayes, Jose Trevino) on next year’s books prior to this extension. That trio totaled just $27.25MM. They’ll likely add a fourth guaranteed contract when struggling closer Emilio Pagán exercises a $10MM player option, and there’s a notable slate of arbitration-eligible players to consider: Lodolo, Abbott, Elly De La Cruz, JJ Bleday, Spencer Steer, TJ Friedl, Matt McLain, Graham Ashcraft, Tony Santillan, Sam Moll and Brandon Williamson.

Of course, Burns’ extension won’t weigh heavily on next year’s budget. Long-term deals for pre-arbitration players of this nature tend to closely mirror what would have been the player’s natural salary progression. In other words, they include salaries close to the league minimum early before progressing to arbitration-level salaries and eventually heavier numbers in the would-be free agent years. Greene’s contract, for instance, includes $33MM in guarantees over the final two guaranteed seasons of a six-year, $53MM deal.

Burns will join Greene and Hayes as the only Reds players guaranteed anything beyond the 2027 season. His extension ties him with former Reds hurler Homer Bailey for the franchise’s largest-ever commitment to a pitcher. Joey Votto‘s 10-year, $225MM deal is the only larger contract the Reds have ever given out to a player. This level of investment from a typically small-payroll club speaks to their faith in Burns to lead the staff for the foreseeable future. At the same time, it’s reasonable enough that it shouldn’t hamstring the Reds, financially speaking, in the years ahead — even if Cincinnati remains one of the league’s lowest-spending teams.

It’s hard not to view the deal as a win for all parties. Burns could surely have earned more if he’d gone year-to-year through arbitration and reached free agency ahead of his age-29 season. However, doing so would come with the risk for injuries and/or a sharp decline in performance. The Reds, meanwhile, secure Burns’ age-29 and age-30 seasons — two of his prime years. Burns will still reach the market ahead of his age-31 season, barring another extension down the road, which gives him ample chance to sign another sizable contract.