Burnett glad to be back
While the Pirates were losing to the San Francisco Giants in the National League wild-card game Oct. 1, A.J. Burnett watched from home. He turned to his wife, Karen, with a question.
“Why am I not there?”
“From then on,” Burnett said Saturday at PirateFest, “I knew I had to get it done.”
He did just that Nov. 14, signing a one-year, $8.5 million contract to return to the team he pitched for in 2012-13. This season, he said, will be his last. He will be 38 when spring training starts. “It’s a lot of miles, man.”
Burnett was so intent on returning to Pittsburgh he instructed his agent, Darek Braunecker, not to negotiate with any team but the Pirates. Burnett came back, he said, for a number of reasons: the ballpark, the fans, pitching coach Ray Searage, his teammates, the chance to return to the place where he turned his career around, the chance to win.
“I think as soon as the Pirates announced (the signing), my phone, Gerrit (Cole’s) calling me, yelling at me,” he said. “Of course (Jeff) Locke was. I didn’t tell Locke; he was mad. (Neil) Walker, Pedro (Alvarez), (Andrew McCutchen) is blowing me up. They kind of all knew, I think they kind of all hoped. And I knew and I hoped.”
After the Pirates acquired Burnett from the New York Yankees in February 2012, he posted a 3.41 ERA in 61 starts in 2012-13. He led the NL in strikeouts per nine innings in 2013. Then, after saying he would return to the Pirates or retire, he signed with the Philadelphia Phillies on a complicated one-year contract with mutual and player options for 2015.
Last season went poorly. Burnett pitched through a hernia for most of the year. He started 34 games and pitched 213 2/3 innings, but led the majors in earned runs and walks allowed. The hernia was not so much painful as it was annoying, and it consistently affected him.
“But I signed the contract,” Burnett said. “I wasn’t going to go on the DL and just take my money. I was going to try to do what I could.”
He declined his portion of the option, had surgery to correct the hernia Oct. 3 and set about returning to the Pirates.
“A bad year’s a bad year,” he said. “I know it’s on the back of the card, and that’s the one you don’t want to look at. But we got another year coming up. I know we’re in a good park. If I keep the ball on the ground, with our defense, it’s going to be a huge positive.”
He added, “I think the atmosphere in Pittsburgh might help strikeouts, too, a little bit.”
Burnett doesn’t want his final season to be a farewell tour or to distract from the task at hand.
“I don’t plan on dwelling on it, I don’t plan on talking about it until it comes to that day,” he said. “I just wouldn’t want to go out anywhere else.”
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