Reds broadcast revealed the one Chase Burns reality nobody wants to discuss

Chase Burns has been the Cincinnati Reds best starting pitcher this season and should be an early frontrunner for the NL Cy Young Award. Unfortunately, due to circumstances outside of his control, the young fireballer is unlikely to be in that conversation at the end of the season.

John Sadak and Jeff Brantley were on the call for Tuesday's game between the Reds and New York Mets, and The Cowboy revealed the hard truth that the Cincinnati faithful don't want to talk about. At some point this season, the Reds will have to cap the number of innings that Burns pitches.

"You better get a ticket and watch him now, because there's only so many innings that this kid is going to be able to pitch this year," Brantley said during the bottom of the sixth inning during Tuesday's broadcast. "I don't know how the Reds are going to manipulate it as the season goes along."

"But Burns has been so good, so quick. And they've needed him so much that it's not like they've been able to manage his innings early in the season," Brantley continued. "You just let him go, but there is going to be an innings-limit. We don't really know what that is at this point. I'm going to say somewhere from 150 back towards 100, but he's getting there in a hurry."

The Reds will have to shut Chase Burns down at some point this season

While Reds fans will hate to hear this, Brantley is 100% correct. Given the Reds' rash of injuries at the outset of the season, and the team's need for Burns to be a crucial member of the starting rotation, it's easy to forget that an innings-restriction was talked about even before the 2026 season began. Between his time in the major and minor leagues last season, Burns logged 109⅓ innings of work.

Brantley expounded upon his point later in the broadcast, suggesting that the Reds could potentially add 35 to 40 innings on top of his previous workload, which would bring Burns to somewhere in the neighborhood of about 140 innings this season. After working 5⅓ innings on Tuesday against the Mets, Burns is sitting at 64⅓ innings on the season.

If Brantley's calculations are correct, the Reds have about 75 innings to play with. The assumption would be that if Burns continues to cover about six innings per start, he's got about 12 starts left for the remainder of 2026 season. If that's the case, he would have to be shut down sometime around the end of July or the beginning of August. That's far from an ideal scenario given that Burns has been the ace of the staff this season.

There are some ways the Reds could mitigate this impending crisis, none of which are ideal. Placing Burns on the injured list, optioning him to the minor leagues for a lesser workload, or piggybacking him with another starter could all be on the table. The problem with all of those options is the void it creates in the Reds' rotation.

Thankfully, Hunter Greene and Brandon Williamson are rehabbing at the Reds' complex in Arizona and both pitchers are expected to return to Cincinnati once the team is back from their current road trip. Top prospect Chase Petty has already made two spot starts for the Reds this season, and Rhett Lowder could return from his shoulder injury very soon.

Reds fans don't want to think about life without Chase Burns in the starting rotation, but it's a reality they're going to have to face sooner or later this season.

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