SARASOTA, Fla. – The final exhibition start for Corbin Burnes was more of a tune-up for Opening Day. Get a few more innings and pitches under his belt and get him out of Florida healthy.
Burnes worked 5 1/3 innings tonight before Tyler Wells replaced him, allowing two runs (one earned) and five hits with no walks and four strikeouts. He totaled 57 pitches, 44 for strikes in his fifth spring training appearance, and did more throwing in the bullpen.
Other work in camp was done on the back fields. Not everything that happens is for public viewing.
Burnes finishes with a 6.75 ERA in 16 innings.
“We’re in a great spot,” he said. “We were kind of at the point early on where we were trying to find the cutter a little bit, just the command of it. Off-speed stuff’s been great the whole camp, which usually comes pretty quickly for me. The last thing is as you kind of ramp up throwing, it’s all about finding the cutter and we did the last two, which has been really good.”