Former GM proposes SF Giants trade for Brewers star Corbin Burnes

The Milwaukee Brewers may be open to trading Corbin Burnes this offseason, and former GM Jim Bowden sees a fit with the SF Giants.

Milwaukee Brewers right-handed starter Corbin Burnes may or may not be on the trade block this offseason, and the SF Giants should be interested in acquiring the 2021 NL Cy Young Award winner and St. Mary’s College product. Jim Bowden, a disgraced former general manager and current columnist for The Athletic, agreed with that sentiment, including the Giants as one of five teams who could land Burnes before he heads to free agency after the 2024 season.

Brewers ace Corbin Burnes pitches against the St. Louis Cardinals. (2023) / Michael McLoone-USA TODAY Sports

Burnes is unlikely to return to Milwaukee after 2024 for multiple reasons. The Brewers operate as a small-market organization and have in the past dealt away players like Josh Hader and Jonathan Lucroy a year or more before they were set to reach free agency, when Milwaukee would only receive a compensatory draft pick.

Additionally, Burnes and the Brewers already have a somewhat fractured relationship after the two parties went to an arbitration hearing over a $750,000 difference between Burnes’ $10.75 million ask and the team’s $10.01 million offer. The arbitration panel sided with the Brewers and Burnes said the hearing “definitely hurt” his relationship with the organization.

“Honestly, it's tough to hear, tough to take, but they're trying to do what they can to win the hearing,” Burnes said in a February interview with MLB.com reporter Adam McCalvy. “But obviously I think there are other ways they could have gone about it. Be a little more respectful with the way they went about it.”

Knowing Burnes is likely to leave the Badger State in free agency next year, the Brewers could seek to acquire multiple players in return for a full year of the 29-year-old ace. For Bowden, that means a package headlined by left-handed starter Carson Whisenhunt (Giants Top 6 Prospect).

"For the Giants to even be in the conversation for Burnes, they’d have to start their package with lefty Carson Whisenhunt, which they’re not going to want to do," wrote Bowden. "Whisenhunt, 23, posted a 2.45 ERA in 16 starts last season, with 83 strikeouts in 58 2/3 innings across three minor-league levels. A second-round pick out of East Carolina in 2022, Whisenhunt is the type of name that speeds up trade talks. Perhaps a prospect package of Whisenhunt, outfielder Jairo Pomares and infielder Diego Velasquez would get a deal done."

Whisenhunt enters 2024 as a top-50 prospect and arguably the Giants’ second-best pitching prospect behind Kyle Harrison, with an elite changeup that has already made one of the best hitting prospects in the league look foolish. Whisenhunt doesn’t quite have the ace-type ceiling of Harrison, but he is the kind of player who can anchor this kind of trade package.

It’s the other two players where this deal truly becomes a steal for San Francisco and probably leaves some Brewers fans thankful Matt Arnold is the organization’s current general manager. Pomares missed nearly all of 2023 with leg and back injuries, but ran strikeout rates around 32 percent at both levels of A-ball in the two seasons prior and his best-case outcome at this point may be the long side of a platoon in an outfield corner.

Velasquez (Giants Top 25 Prospect), meanwhile, had a sterling season for Low-A San Jose, hitting for contact from both sides of the plate and showing he can handle both shortstop and second base. He’s undersized however, listed at 6-foot-1 and just 150 pounds, and despite hitting a career-high eight home runs in 2023, he projects much closer to a Nick Madrigal-esque profile than any sort of consistent power threat.

So to recap, we have a legitimate top-50 pitching prospect likely to debut in 2024, a platoon outfielder who is already strikeout prone at the lowest levels of the minors and a contact-oriented middle infielder who only just turned 20 on Oct. 1 and is still years away from the majors, all for a pitcher who has been one of the best starters in the league over the last three years.

The closest recent comparison may be the Seattle Mariners’ 2022 deadline trade for Luis Castillo at a time when he was roughly 18 months from reaching free agency. The Mariners dealt two top-50 infielders in Noelvi Marte and Edwin Arroyo and two pitchers to the Reds for Castillo. In other words, if Milwaukee floats a deal for Burnes that is in any way similar to Bowden’s, the SF Giants should accept it hastily before the Brewers come to their senses.