The Cincinnati Reds will begin their spring training schedule on Saturday when they play at home against the Cleveland Guardians in Goodyear, Arizona. While the game is at the home stadium for the Reds, they are the “visiting” team since the facility is also shared with Cleveland and someone has to be the “road” team.
If you are going to be tuning into the game, listening to it, following it online, or are simply just going to check in after the game to see how things went, the one thing we know about it today is that it’s going to be Chase Burns that is getting the start. Terry Francona mentioned that to the media this morning, with Pat Brennan of the Cincinnati Enquirer noting it first.
One of the goals for Burns this offseason was working on and improving his change up. It’s been a clear third pitch for him behind the fastball and the slider. Charlie Goldsmith of Fox 19 wrote about Burns and his focus on the pitch this offseason, and one of the notes from his article is that manager Terry Francona saying that the pitch is night and day from where it was last season.
In 2025 Chase Burns pitched in High-A Dayton, Double-A Chattanooga, Triple-A Louisville, and in the big leagues with the Reds. Only in Triple-A and MLB did we get full pitch tracking. He only had two outings in Triple-A and then he had 15 games with Cincinnati, but six of the games with the Reds were in relief and in two starts he threw 0.1 (struggles in Boston) and 1.0 innings (rain at Bristol). Still, it’s a solid sample size for the purpose of looking at how he was utilizing his pitches.
In his two Triple-A starts he threw 22 change ups out of 174 pitches thrown. That is a change up usage rate of 13%. In his 15 games with Cincinnati he only topped the 10% mark twice, topping out at 12% against the Nationals. In a third outing he was at exactly 10%. In his start against Colorado he threw 95 pitches and there was not a single change up among them. In four of his six relief outings to end the year (including the playoffs) he didn’t throw a single change up.
The change up wasn’t the only pitch he seemed to get away from when he got to the big leagues. He threw 14 curveballs in his two starts for Louisville. In his first five starts with the Reds he threw 12 of them total. He didn’t throw any of them in his final nine appearances.
Last season Chase Burns threw 43.1 innings for the Reds. He struck out 13.9 batters per 9-innings pitched. Among pitchers who threw at least 40 innings last season there were only two guys who had a better strikeout per 9-innings rate: Mason Miller and Cole Ragans. If Burns has a better change up this year than he did last season it’s just going to present another big problem for opposing hitters who have already shown that they’ve got some big problems when facing him.
