Chase Burns is headed somewhere he has never started a major league game before.
On Monday night, the Reds right-hander will take the mound at Oracle Park in San Francisco for the opener of Cincinnati’s series against the Giants, adding another milestone to a season that keeps stacking them up.
Burns comes in on the back of another sharp outing Wednesday, when he struck out eight Cardinals and held them to two runs over five innings. It was his second straight eight-strikeout start, and it also pushed him to 19 games this year allowing two runs or fewer. That matches the most such starts in the Majors, and it made him the first Reds pitcher since 1900 to give up two runs or fewer 19 times in his first 24 appearances of a season.
He already saw this Giants group once, and it did not go well for them. On April 16 at Great American Ball Park, Burns worked six scoreless innings, allowed only two hits and left San Francisco searching for answers. He got there even without much help from the early count - he threw a first-pitch strike to just seven of 18 batters and posted only a 19.6 whiff rate - but a pair of crucial double plays let him cruise through the minimum.
The lineup Burns will face this time looks different. Luis Arraez and Patrick Bailey are gone from that April starting nine because they were traded, while Matt Chapman is injured and Will Brennan is in the Minors. And the timing lines up well for Cincinnati, with San Francisco entering play Sunday last in the National League in OPS in August.
Burns has been steady all season, and the numbers on four days’ rest have been especially good in 2026. He owns an 0.98 WHIP and a 2.49 ERA in eight starts this season, and he’s part of a Reds rotation that has been rolling as well, with Cincinnati one of four clubs to post at least 20 quality starts dating back to July 1.
The slider is still the pitch that drives so much of what he does. Burns has leaned on it heavily, and for good reason: it carries the third-highest run value among all slide pieces in the Majors this season, behind only Dylan Cease and Jacob deGrom. It has also produced a 51.8 percent whiff rate, second in the big leagues only to Padres closer Mason Miller, and opponents are batting just .144 against it.
Already an NL All-Star in Philadelphia last month, Burns has put together a historic 2026 season. If he stays healthy, he has at least six or seven more starts ahead of him, and he enters that stretch with 14 wins, a 2.51 ERA and 159 strikeouts at age 23 - a line that puts him in a rare class of pitchers who reached those marks, or better, at the same age:
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