Reds set to promote top prospect Chase Burns for MLB debut

He’s slated for Tuesday’s start against the New York Yankees.

Chase Burns has torched opposing hitters during his first season as a professional.

The former #2 overall draft pick by the Cincinnati Reds owns a sparkling 1.77 ERA and absurd 89/13 K/BB through 66.0 IP so far this year, and that’s come via stops with High-A Dayton, AA Chattanooga, and AAA Louisville across 13 starts.

It appears his next start will come at the big league level.

With the Cincinnati Reds down ace Hunter Greene, the young Rhett Lowder, and veteran Wade Miley, their rotation has taken quite the dent in recent weeks. The Reds, to their credit, seem unwilling to turn to mere rotational fodder in their quest to get back into the playoff race in 2025, and will now turn to Burns to get outs as a big leaguer.

So relays C. Trent Rosecrans of The Athletic, who reported late Saturday evening that Burns will be called up to make Tuesday’s start for his debut - a start that will come against Aaron Judge and the vaunted New York Yankees.

Burns, the #11 overall prospect per MLB Pipeline, will help backfill a rotation that lost the aforementioned trio to various injuries so far this year and saw Nick Martinez step in admirably today against the St. Louis Cardinals on short rest to fire a pair of IP, too.

It’s a bold step for Nick Krall & Co. Usually ones to slow-play just about everything they can, it’s a more rapid step towards pushing their best and brightest prospects earlier, and the hope is that it’s because Burns is simply a generational talent and that they aren’t just desperate.

The next few weeks of the Reds schedule was already set to be perhaps the most crucial, watchable action of the season. It just got a helluva lot more interesting, too.