Collette Calls: Burnes Notice

Corbin Burnes was activated yesterday to make his 2026 debut, throwing three scoreless innings against the Royals. It is very likely too little, too late for the 10 fantasy managers who drafted Burnes in the RotoWire Online Championships or the three fantasy managers who took Burnes in the Main Event, but that is not what is important here. The mere fact Burnes is going to get live action on a major-league mound before the 2027 season gives fantasy managers a chance to at least see if the long layoff has been worth it. Burnes last threw a pitch from a major-league mound on June 1 of 2025, and he knew right away that there was a problem with his elbow:

Burnes will be taking the mound just over 15 months since that pitch and just a few days shy of the 15 month anniversary since his surgery on June 11th of last season. In a pursuit where we are warned against the dangers of reading too much into small sample sizes, even just making an appearance late in the season can propel a pitcher into the first seven rounds of a 15-team draft the following season. In the case of Kyle Bradish, his six starts in late 2025 pushed his ADP this past draft season up to 72 with a minimum pick of 55 in the RotoWire Online Championship. 

Bradish came with his pre-injury velocity, with only a slight modification to his repertoire. Pre-injury, the righty used his sinker, slider, curveball and four-seamer in that order when attacking batters, but he flipped the latter two in his recovery. He posted career-best whiff rates on his breaking balls while holding the league to a .200 batting average along with a 2.53 ERA and 1.03 WHIP. Unfortunately, the exposure of a full season has not been as kind to Bradish this year, as his ERA is 3.91 while his WHIP sits at 1.42 along with a .255 opponents' batting average on the season. He has gone back to his pre-injury repertoire pattern and has even attempted to use changeups again, a pitch he shelved after the 2023 season. Bradish may be the most recent example of the dangers of recency bias when drafting pitchers coming off injury, but there are some positive examples.

Tyler Glasnow went down with an elbow injury in 2021 and required Tommy John surgery on August 4th, 2021. Glasnow made it back on September 28th, 2022 and worked 6.2 innings over two starts as the Rays wrapped up the 2022 season. In those two starts, his velocity was 97.4 miles an hour and his curveball was literally unhittable, as the league did not put it safely into play and he generated swings and misses 75 percent of the time when utilizing the pitch. The sample was enough to push Glasnow to an ADP of 100 in the 2023 season, where he came back to throw a then career-best 120 innings for the Rays with a 3.53 ERA along with a 1.08 WHIP and 162 strikeouts.

The similarly oft-injured Jacob deGrom had a similar comeback in 2024, working 10.2 innings in September for Texas over three starts. DeGrom came out firing with 97.3 mph fastballs, and the small sample size was enough in the minds of fantasy managers to be even more aggressive than they were with Bradish this past season. DeGrom had an ADP of 46 in the 234 RotoWire Online Championship in 2025 and 47 in the 57 Main Event drafts that season. Fantasy managers who took the risk where rewarded with deGrom's best season since 2019, as he made 30 starts with a 2.97 ERA and 0.92 WHIP while striking out 185 in 172.2 innings of work. 

Bradish was not the only notable arm who auditioned for us this past season. Shane Bieber went down with an elbow injury which required Tommy John surgery on April 12th, 2024 and did not make it back on the mound until August 22 of last season. Bieber would go on to make seven starts for Toronto and look like his old self with just seven walks in 40.1 innings of work, leading to a 3.57 ERA and a 1.02 WHIP. The eight homers along initially caused some pause, as he wasn't drafted any higher than 124, but the lingering post-surgery soreness kept him shelved until June 23, and he is currently back on the IL with shoulder soreness. Bieber has worked just 55.2 innings this season with a 4.37 ERA and a 1.42 WHIP in between his injuries and a problematic 1.6 HR/9.

Meanwhile, Cade Cavalli may be the best success story of them all. Cavalli had his surgery on March 22nd, 2023 and missed more than two years, not returning to the mound until August 6 of last season. Cavalli made 10 starts upon his return, working 48.1 innings with a 4.25 ERA and 1.48 WHIP with a greatly diminished strikeout rate compared to his pre-injury numbers. Cavalli's 305 ADP was just slightly lower than Bieber's, but his 243 minimum pick showed that most were scared off by his performance and the Nationals' team context, which included a very bad bullpen and, at the time, a suspect team offense. Cavalli has been fantastic this season over 30 starts, striking out 185 in 158.2 innings and earning 12 wins despite the supporting cast challenges in the pen. He has a 3.12 ERA and 1.18 WHIP to go along with it. His 2025 audition was not teribly encouraging, so the market coolness was understandable, yet the 40 percent whiff rate on the curve and changeup should have at least generated more interest in hindsight.

Whether you are contending for your league or just playing out the string, tune into these appearances by Burnes to see what he looks like the rest of the month. I doubt we will see enough to push him inside the top 50, as was the case with Bradish last year or deGrom before him, but Burnes could potentially work his way into the top 100 in a best case scenario or fit somewhere between the Glasnow and Cavalli outcomes. Do your homework for the 2027 drafts, because we are likely going to have extended time to consider these things with labor negotiations up in the air.