Millions of dollars. Your choice of multiple offers. Wining and dining. Swag. Perks. Private jets. A better version of the lottery. Such are the images we have come to associate with MLB free agency, especially after teams have just forked over $2.6 billion in the 49th go-round of the free-agent carousel that began with the 1976 Basic Agreement.
For Corbin Burnes, one of the top pitchers on the market, the reality of free agency was more prosaic. It included only three offers, lots of talk about day care and school commutes, five weeks that went by with nothing but crickets from his family’s preferred destination, advice from his agent, Scott Boras, about patience, just one in-person visit and only one piece of swag—the Toronto Blue Jays let him keep a tablet pre-loaded with recruiting material about the organization’s facilities and support staff.
“You don’t know what’s going to happen,” Burnes said about his first venture into free agency. “Every other [offseason] you know where you’re going to be and you’ve got your staff you’re working with, from the team phone calls, workouts, throwing programs, whatever.
“So, the biggest factor was the unknown. I think just even from the get-go, there’s just some nerves of, ‘What’s going to happen?’ That’s one of the things people don’t get. We get free agency, yes, but we really can’t control it. People go, ‘You finally get to pick the team you play for.’ It’s really not the case at all.”
In the last hour of Dec. 27, Burnes, 30, agreed to a six-year, $210 million deal with the Arizona Diamondbacks, a deal that seemed to come out of nowhere and pleased him immensely. Burnes lives in Scottsdale, Ariz., with his wife, Brooke, son Carter, 3, and twin daughters Charlotte and Harper, who were born in June. They will not have to switch homes to accommodate his work, not even for spring training.
“And when they start school,” Burnes says, “I can wake up in the morning, and take them to school. And I don’t have to worry about FaceTiming them in the morning and saying, ‘Have a good day at school.’ Like, something happens every day. You don’t have to worry about switching pediatricians in the middle of the season.
“I travel 83 or 84 days of the year and get to be home the rest of those days and not worry about traveling back and forth to be in different cities. I don’t have to split the family up.”
As free agency began, Burnes agreed to provide a peek behind the scenes of free agency—not so much the business side of it, but more about the personal side. This is his story. It is his personal timeline of his 57-day journey into free agency.
