PHOENIX — Torey Lovullo was on a flight back from New York to Arizona over the holidays when the Diamondbacks manager received an unexpected text.
"The owner's asking, ‘Where are you, can you call me wherever you are?'" Lovullo recalled. "I'm like, ‘Oh my God.'"
Lovullo talks to managing general partner Ken Kendrick around seven to 10 times a year, including a couple of times via text, but never in late December.
Upon landing and getting in touch with Kendrick, any fear or panic Lovullo experienced shifted to elation and exhilaration.
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"We're going to engage Corbin Burnes," Kendrick told Lovullo. "We're going to see where this takes us."
Adding the top starting pitcher on the market wasn't part of Arizona's business model when the offseason began, Kendrick admitted. There appeared to be more glaring needs on the D-backs' roster, and the team usually operates with a payroll that ranks in the bottom half of the sport.
But when Burnes expressed his desire to stay close to home and his three young children — his twin daughters, Harper and Charlotte, were born last June — the model changed. Kendrick felt inspired. An opportunity had fallen in the D-backs' lap, and they were ready to pounce.
"Once Ken got engaged, when he makes a commitment like that, he gets super aggressive," Lovullo said. "I knew that there was a really good chance."
What Lovullo wasn't sure about, at least at the time, was Burnes' perspective.
By late December, Blake Snell and Max Fried had already found new homes with the Dodgers and Yankees, respectively. That left Burnes as the lone nine-figure pitcher still looming on the market. A former Cy Young Award winner and an All-Star each of the past four seasons, it should come as little surprise that he was drawing significant interest.
While he has seen his strikeout rate steadily decline since his 2021 Cy Young season, Burnes has still been one of the most productive pitchers in baseball in that time. Among pitchers who've thrown at least 500 innings over the last three years, he ranks third in ERA, strikeouts and innings pitched. He has also finished in the top eight in Cy Young voting in each of the past five seasons.
He was a workhorse unlike any other pitcher on the market.
"We had heard from four or five other teams before we heard from [the D-backs], before we kind of got in contact with them," Burnes told FOX Sports. "We had a couple offers on the table already. One was in writing, a couple verbal, nothing that was really serious yet, just to get the door open and start negotiations. But we never really pursued it hard because we were waiting to see if these guys and more teams were going to jump in."
The more teams that were interested, Burnes figured, the more leverage there would be in negotiations. He described his first experience of free agency as "pretty stressful," but he also told his agent, Scott Boras, that he had no problem being patient.
While other teams had deeper pockets, none could offer Arizona's proximity. And though the D-backs aren't to be confused with MLB's luxury-tax offenders, and are still operating with a payroll nearly $200 million less than that of the rival Dodgers, they will splurge occasionally and selectively.
Much like they did nine years ago, when they surprised the baseball world by signing Zack Greinke, they operated in relative stealth as they lured in the pitching prize of the offseason.
The free-agency process went longer into the offseason than Burnes would've liked, but he eventually landed where he wanted.
"Just when we started to look at everything, this was the ideal spot," Burnes said.
Once negotiations began, both sides moved expeditiously. Two days after his chat with Kendrick, Lovullo, a Southern California native who has family ties in Western New York, was visiting his mother on the West Coast when he said he received "a wall of text messages." One came from Buffalo Bills' long snapper Reid Ferguson.
"Corbin Burnes??" the text read. Then came another: "That's an unbelievable addition."
‘What!?" Lovullo responded before going straight to Google to see the news.
Initial phone calls between Burnes' representation and the Diamondbacks went directly between owner and agent. Boras tried to sell Kendrick on the value of having "two true No. 1 starters" in Burnes and Zac Gallen, much the same way the 2001 champion Diamondbacks won with Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling.
"We began to talk and realized there was probably a model we could make work," Kendrick said at Burnes' introductory press conference.
The D-backs would typically loop Lovullo in before a deal of that magnitude was finalized, but the operation in the days leading up to Burnes' signing shortly after Christmas was unusual. General manager Mike Hazen was with his kids in New Zealand. Assistant general manager Amiel Sawdaye was in Paris with family. It wasn't until well after 10 p.m. PT on the night of Dec. 27 when reports first emerged about Burnes' decision.
Over the course of a few days, Burnes and the Diamondbacks had hammered out the terms on the richest contract in franchise history, a six-year, $210-million pact that surpassed Greinke's eerily similar six-year, $206.5 million deal. Burnes will have the ability to opt out after the 2026 season.
"I hope it sends the message that we're in it to win it," Kendrick said.
Burnes had spent six springs close to home in Phoenix, where he and his family had moved in 2018, while playing for the Brewers. Last year, after getting traded to Baltimore, he experienced spring training in Florida for the first time. Another first was fast approaching.
For years, he and his wife had discussed what free agency might look like and where they might like to go. They hoped their family could be together as much as possible. "There's really only one spot you can do that," Burnes said.
But staying close to his home in Scottsdale was not the sole reason for his decision. Burnes wasn't going to tie himself long-term to a losing effort. The Diamondbacks had left an imprint on him during their surprising march to the World Series in 2023. On April 11 of that season, Burnes shut the D-backs out over eight innings. The next time he faced them in June, they looked like a different group. He surrendered a season-high seven runs over five innings.
Milwaukee and Arizona would meet again with much higher stakes in the wild-card round. In Game 1, the Brewers spotted Burnes an early 3-0 lead when the D-backs stormed back, tagging him for four runs over four innings. Burnes saw a young group he thought would be competitive for a long time.
"Obviously when you're going to sign a long-term deal, you want to be able to win every year you're there," Burnes said. "First, you've got to look at teams that are contacting you that are going to be consistent winners over the course of that deal. You have that and obviously the family aspect of it, and the stage of life me and my wife are in right now, as easy as it can be on the family as possible, the better."
The signing was a stunner not only because the Diamondbacks outlasted the league's biggest spenders but also because they already had a full and formidable rotation without Burnes. Still, the group was coming off a year marred by injury and underperformance.
Their starters had a 4.79 ERA last season, fourth-worst in the majors. A hamstring injury cost Gallen a month. A shoulder injury limited Merrill Kelly to 13 starts. Their major offseason signings of Eduardo Rodriguez and Jordan Montgomery did not yield production. Rodriguez finished with a 5.04 ERA in 10 starts after dealing with a lat strain. More troublingly, Montgomery, a year after helping lift the Texas Rangers past the Diamondbacks in the World Series, had a 6.23 ERA in 25 appearances and spent the end of the year bouncing between the rotation and bullpen.
Arizona's struggles on the mound, both starting and in relief, helped explain how a Diamondbacks group that scored more runs than any team in baseball last year still missed the postseason. The D-backs could have simply hoped for better health and production in 2025.
Instead, at a time when the Dodgers had already flexed their financial might, throwing tax payments to the wind as they continued to add a staggering amount of talent in their quest to repeat as champions, Arizona still tried to compete in a way many teams did not this winter. Even with Madison Bumgarner's $85 million contract coming off the books and Christian Walker and Paul Sewald signing elsewhere, the addition of Burnes represented a significant financial commitment for an Arizona team that is currently slated to operate its highest-ever Opening Day payroll, a figure roughly $20 million more than the one they sported a season ago.
Shortly after the D-backs signed their new ace, Lovullo gave Burnes a call. In their first conversation, Lovullo wanted to reiterate the amount of work still ahead for a D-backs group looking to rebound. He enjoyed Burnes' response.
"Let's go, are you ready to win a s*** ton of games?" Lovullo recalled Burnes saying on The Jim Rome Show.
That, Burnes said when asked about the conversation, was probably an accurate recollection.
With the Dodgers dominating the NL West, the Diamondbacks have made the postseason just twice in the last 13 years. In 2017, they were swept by the Dodgers in the National League Division Series. Six years later, they answered back, sweeping the Dodgers in the NLDS during their unexpected 2023 run.
Perhaps, by adding a star of Burnes' caliber, another surprise awaits.
"Obviously, the market these guys are in, they don't get to do that very often," Burnes said. "It's kind of your window to go after it and get it. The fact that ownership recognized that and went out and got me and made the trade for [Josh] Naylor and made some other good moves shows they're ready to go, ready to compete. I think Torey was fired up about it, so when he called me, I kind of echoed that. I'm excited."
Rowan Kavner is an MLB writer for FOX Sports. He previously covered the L.A. Dodgers, LA Clippers and Dallas Cowboys. An LSU grad, Rowan was born in California, grew up in Texas, then moved back to the West Coast in 2014. Follow him on Twitter at @RowanKavner.
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