Brewers Place Cy Young Contender Corbin Burnes On The IL

In a banner day for horrible news in the Wisconsin sports world, Corbin Burnes has been placed on the IL by the Brewers.

The Brewers have been hit by a large number of injuries and Burnes marks the 14th player to currently be on the injured list.

What’s interesting is that the Brewers did not have an injury designation for Corbin Burnes and did not give a reason for him to be on the IL.

With Godley’s placement on the injured list, they gave a reason: a right index finger contusion. But with Burnes? Nothing. Also, Godley was on the 10-day injured list, while for Burnes they just said injured list.

So what does that mean?

In all likelihood, this means that this isn’t an injury issue with Burnes, but instead is probably something related to Covid. Teams are not able to publicly release info about a player’s health if it’s not related to an injury if the player doesn’t sign off on publicly disclosing it.

This hasn’t been confirmed, but a Covid positive test or a close contact could be the reason for the IL designation for Burnes.

Regardless of the reason why, Burnes is unlikely to make his next scheduled start on Sunday. Losing Burnes for any length of time is a huge blow to this team that’s already been dealt an unusually large number of blows early this season.

Burnes has been the Crew’s best starting pitcher this season, with a 1.53 ERA and a still pristine 0.00 BB/9 rate with 49 strikeouts.

Hopefully Burnes won’t be out for too long. The rotation has been the strength of this team and Burnes has been the key piece of that.

This is just the cherry on top of quite the day in Wisconsin sports, with the news of Aaron Rodgers being upset with the Packers, Burnes going on the IL is cause for some concern. If it is Covid, Burnes could miss only a few days, or he could miss an extended period of time. Last year, Luis Urias missed a couple of weeks with a back-and-forth battle with Covid.

Lauer and Bettinger got called up to fill the roster spots of Burnes and Godley as the Brewers were just planning on expanding their rotation to a six man group. If Burnes is out now too, that means they’ll need another pitcher to come up and fill a spot, and they’re already down to 9th on the depth chart.

Burnes and Godley are the third and fourth starting pitchers to hit the IL for the Crew right now and are the 13th and 14th players currently on the shelf. It’s been a horrible string of health issues for Milwaukee.