'Seriously?': Corbin Burnes comments on his trade from the Brewers to the Orioles

If you were caught off-guard by the Corbin Burnes trade on Thursday night, you weren’t alone. The man sent to the Baltimore Orioles was just as surprised. 

Corbin Burnes spoke about being dealt to the Orioles as a guest on the "Foul Territory" show on YouTube on Friday afternoon.

Burnes, the 2021 National League Cy Young winner who was sent from the Milwaukee Brewers to Baltimore in exchange for prospects DL Hall and Joey Ortiz along with the 34th pick in the 2024 draft, had braced for the possibility of being traded for much of the winter knowing he was headed into his last season before free agency. 

But with spring training less than two weeks away and the Brewers having just signed first baseman Rhys Hoskins in a win-now move, he started to think he would remain with Milwaukee with the club chasing another division title in 2024.

Then, Thursday evening, he got a call from Brewers general manager Matt Arnold. 

“I told my wife as soon as I saw the phone call that I just got traded,” Burnes said on the show. “She said, ‘What do you mean?’ I said, ‘Watch.’” 

The hunch was correct. 

“I was shocked,” Burnes said. “Being this late in the spring with some of the moves the Brewers had made to better the offense and get some more depth ... it was definitely shock.”

Burnes then called his agent, Scott Boras, who also represents Hoskins.  

“There was shock when I called my agent,” Burnes said. “He was like, ‘Seriously? It kind of goes counterproductive to some of the comments that were said with the Hoskins signing.’ It definitely caught everyone off-guard.”

It wasn’t completely out of the blue, of course.

The Brewers, as a small-market team, operate in a world of constantly trying to balance the present with the future.

The quandary they faced this off-season involved what to do with Burnes and shortstop Willy Adames in their final years of club control. Would they keep them and maximize their contention chances in 2024 at the risk of likely losing both and getting nothing a compensation pick? Or would they find a trade partner in the name of long-term sustainability? 

They ultimately sought the move that had an eye on the future.

Burnes then shed some light into how long the Brewers had been shopping him this off-season.

“When I talked to (Orioles general manager Mike) Elias he said that the Brewers were open to trading me (earlier), then they said, ‘Nope we’re not trading him,'" Burnes said. "Then again, as of recently they were open to trading me again. 

“It was kind of on-again, off-again thing for an entire offseason and eventually they got it done. I don’t know if there’s something that changed in the organization’s thought process, or if it was one of those things where they’ve been open to it the entire off-season and were just waiting for the right deal and it came. But it definitely caught me by surprise.”

In his comments to the "Foul Territory" panel that included host Scott Braun and former players AJ Pierzynski and Todd Frazier, Burnes thanked the Brewers organization and fans for their support from when he debuted in 2018 through the trade.

“That’s the only organization  that I’ve been a part of up to this point,” he said. “They gave me a chance out of college. They gave me a second chance after 2019 when I struggled so bad. We had a lot of winning seasons, a lot of good baseball over there. I felt honored to be a part of the best stretch of Brewers baseball in history. To have that many winning seasons, to go to the postseason that many times. We had a really good thing going over there. Each year it seemed we were one piece away, one big game away from going all the way.

“I loved every minute of being in that city.”