It's official. Cincinnati and Chase Burns agreed to a seven-year, $105 million extension that runs through the 2033 season, and both MLB Trade Rumors and Mark Feinsand confirmed the deal is done. Not agreed-in-principle, not pending a physical rumor cycle — official.
The Reds have officially announced their seven-year, $105 million contract extension with Chase Burns that locks him up through the 2033 season.
For context on how absurd this is: Burns is 23 years old and has thrown all of 102 2/3 big-league innings. He went No. 2 overall to the Reds out of Wake Forest in the 2024 draft after leading college baseball with 191 strikeouts, and he's barely a full year into his MLB career. This season he's been an All-Star, sitting at 11-1 with a 2.54 ERA and 118 strikeouts. That's the kind of small sample that usually makes teams nervous about buying long-term security — instead the Reds sprinted toward it.
The numbers back up how big a swing this is. It's reportedly the largest contract ever given to a pitcher who hadn't yet reached arbitration, and it slots in as the third-biggest deal in franchise history behind only Joey Votto's 10-year, $225 million extension and Ken Griffey Jr.'s nine-year, $116.5 million deal. The structure buys out two of Burns' free-agent years, carries no club options, and runs 2027 through 2033 — meaning Cincinnati is paying now to guarantee it never has to sweat an arbitration fight or a trade-deadline rumor mill with its best young arm.
Chase Burns' seven-year, $105M extension with the #Reds is now official: t.co/SLTRH3shEJ
This is also a statement about how the Reds see themselves. Cincinnati hasn't exactly been a big-spending franchise in the modern era, and locking a 23-year-old into a $105 million commitment before he's even hit arbitration is a departure from the usual small-market playbook. It's the kind of move a team makes when it believes the guy is the face of the next contending window, not just a nice piece to flip for prospects down the line.
The bet is straightforward: Burns has ace-level stuff, an ace-level ERA through his first taste of the majors, and now he's not going anywhere. If the stuff holds — and there's no reason to think it won't given what he's shown so far — the Reds just bought themselves a decade of cost-controlled, top-of-rotation certainty at a price that could look like an absolute steal by 2030.