Corbin Burnes broke the ice, and now he’ll try to settle in and help the Diamondbacks reach the postseason over the final stretch of the regular season. Coming off a long recovery process following Tommy John surgery, Burnes made his 2026 debut on Tuesday by delivering three scoreless innings against the Royals. In what wound up as a 5-3 Arizona victory in 11 innings, Burnes set the tone. The former Cy Young Award winner allowed two hits and two walks, but the Royals couldn’t cash in as Burnes ended his evening with a flourish by striking out Salvador Perez on a 93.5 mph cutter with a runner at second. Burnes threw 57 pitches, 35 for strikes. Manager Torey Lovullo had targeted Burnes for 60-65 pitches prior to the game, but decided to go with Kade Strowd for the fourth after Burnes took care of Perez and finished on a high note. Burnes had hoped to get through four innings in his return, but a 10-pitch at-bat against Vinnie Pasquantino in the third thwarted that goal. After 464 days between starts, Burnes is back. “Now we can stop talking about how long it has been and just get back to playing baseball,” Burnes said. “It was good. For the most part, we did what we wanted to do. Really, it was three at-bats that caused the pitch count to get up there. The two walks plus the 10-pitch at-bat to Vinny zapped that pitch count.” On the 10th pitch, Pasquantino hit a drive to left-center that Tommy Troy failed to handle and the play went for the double and added to Burnes’ pitch count. Burnes was pleased with his arsenal for the first outing and hopes to build on it as he makes more starts that could loom large as Arizona tries to reach the postseason. “It was probably 50-50 on curveballs, good ones versus bad ones,” Burnes said. “It seemed like the two-strike curveballs were the bad ones. I threw a couple of decent sliders. A good one to build on.”
