In September, as Corbin Burnes reflected on what went wrong the previous month, his mind drifted forward toward the implications five starts can have out of 32 total.

“Frankly,” Burnes said, “it may have cost me another run at the Cy Young.”

In August, Burnes produced the single worst month of his major league career when he allowed 28 runs (21 earned) in five starts. By September, Burnes was back to his best: In 30 innings, he allowed only four earned runs. He did it by retooling his cutter, an offering that wavered in August and gave hitters a chance against a pitcher who has been near the top of Cy Young voting since 2020.

Burnes still likely placed on most Cy Young ballots. He has finished in the the top eight each of the last four seasons. But when finalists in the American League were announced Monday, it came as little surprise — especially to Burnes, who presaged it two months ago — that the Orioles ace wasn’t among the top three.

That distinction went to Detroit Tigers lefty Tarik Skubal (18-4, 2.39 ERA), Cleveland Guardians closer Emmanuel Clase (47 saves, 0.61 ERA) and Kansas City Royals workhorse Seth Lugo (16-9, 3.00 ERA).

For the first half of the season, though, Burnes appeared to be on track to win pitching’s highest honor a second time. He was named the starter of the American League All-Star team after he entered the break with a 2.43 ERA — the third-lowest in the majors — and a 1.04 WHIP. Up to that point, he had completed at least six innings in 16 of his 19 starts and only once allowed more than three earned runs.

How would his resume look if we magically wiped away his disastrous August and skipped right ahead to September? Burnes would’ve had a major-league best 2.24 ERA for a starting pitcher.

OK, sure, every player would love to have his worst month taken away to help his case for an award. That’s obviously not how this works; the whole campaign has to be taken into account.

Let’s consider this: What if Burnes had been merely average in August? We’ll conservatively define “average” (for Burnes, anyway) here as five innings, two earned runs. On the whole, Burnes pitched five innings or more with two runs or fewer in 22 of his 32 starts. It’s safe to call that a benchmark he frequently hit.

With five of those average starts, Burnes’ August instead would have looked like this: 25 innings with 10 earned runs. His season, then, would appear this way: 193 2/3 innings with 52 earned runs, working out to a 2.42 ERA, much closer to Skubal.

Of course, giving Burnes the benefit of revising his worst stretch means the same privilege should go to the other finalists. That’s hard to do for Clase and Skubal, who did not have any period of poor performance that stands out as a statistical outlier.

Clase was in a class of his own as a reliever. His “worst” month came in June, when he gave up two earned runs over 11 innings (1.64 ERA). Skubal had only one start with more than four earned runs and only once had consecutive starts with more than three runs against him.

Lugo, meanwhile, had a similarly rocky August. He still finished with a 3.00 ERA despite allowing a combined 20 earned runs in six starts that month, but to swap those for six starts with five innings and two earned runs would leave him with a 2.75 ERA this season.

In that sense — an imaginary one — Burnes would hold the upper hand in modified ERA. Had that one month been different, Burnes could be in the running for his second Cy Young Award. And he could have broken a long drought for the Orioles, whose last pitcher to win the honor was Steve Stone in 1980.

Instead, he’s hitting the open market without that distinction. He won’t need it, anyway. Apart from right-hander Roki Sasaki, the newly posted Japanese pitcher set to attract interest from every club this winter, Burnes figures to be the most coveted starter in free agency.

That’s because his season was Cy Young-worthy for five months out of six, showing how wildly one month of aberration can change the overall statistics of a player’s season. And it underscores how difficult it will be to replace him in the Orioles rotation if he signs elsewhere.