Chase Burns has a clear path to join Jacob Misiorowski in future Cy Young battles

The NL Central has become a bastion of elite pitching, with both the 2025 Cy Young winner (Paul Skenes) and the heavy favorite for the 2026 award (Jacob Misiorowski) hailing from the division. If anyone is capable of joining that duo and continuing the trend in 2027, it's Cincinnati Reds right-hander Chase Burns.

That's rather lofty praise for someone with less than 200 innings of MLB experience under their belt, but here's a fun data point to consider: Entering their respective Cy Young seasons, Skenes had thrown 133 innings in the big leagues while Misiorowski sat at just 66 frames. Youth is the name of the game now, as this next generation of hard-throwing starters continues to revolutionize what it means to be the ace of a rotation.

So, rather than fawn over the numerous dominant traits Burns already possesses, let's try and figure out how he can bridge the gap to the league's elite this offseason.

Detailing how Chase Burns can improve enough to compete for future NL Cy Young awards

The first place people tend to turn when analyzing a player these days is Baseball Savant, though the Statcast-powered platform mostly tells us what we already know. Burns' biggest weaknesses lie in contact quality and the type of contact he allows, as his barrel rate, groundball rate, and average exit velocity allowed all sit below the 50th percentile league-wide (i.e., he's below average in those aspects).

It's obviously important for the right-hander to improve in these regards, though he mitigates a lot of concerns by racking up enormous whiff (32%, 91st percentile) and chase rates (34.3%, 85th percentile); hitters won't be able to do much damage off him if they can't get the bat on the ball.

The easiest solution to the contact quality problem is adding some diversity to Burns' arsenal. He's far too reliant on his primary two pitches -- his fastball and slider made up nearly 95% of his usage in 2026. And his only other pitcher, the changeup, was obliterated to the tune of a .476 batting average and .925 slugging percentage.

That last point also feeds into another core issue, which is that Burns struggles against left-handed hitters. That's hardly a novel problem for a young righty, but he's not going to enter many awards conversations if more than half the batters he's facing are posting a .734 OPS against him as they did in 2026.

A more reliable off-speed pitch would go a long way toward neutralizing lefties, though he could always take the Misiorowski route by adding an additional fastball to his repertoire (Miz's new cutter was his second-most effective pitch in 2026, generating +10 run value).

That's obviously not a short list of demands, and coming up with a solution for one of those problems, let alone all of them, is easier said than done. But Burns' foundation is so solid — and his strikeout potential is so high — that he simply needs to get marginally better in these areas to have a real shot at dethroning Skenes and Misiorowski atop the NL Central pitching hierarchy.

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