BUFFALO, NY — As Shane Bieber sat between Chris Bassitt and Kevin Gausman in the Toronto Blue Jays dugout during Saturday afternoon’s game, sharing insight with the new teammates he met only hours earlier, he looked around Rogers Centre, up at the CN Tower, and out to the mound where Max Scherzer was spinning a gem.
Nearly 16 months out from the Tommy John surgery Dr. Keith Meister performed in his right elbow on April 12, 2024, and only 48 hours past being traded to the Blue Jays by the organization that drafted him, Bieber couldn’t help but wonder what it’ll feel like to finally be back out there himself.
“Yeah, I was thinking about that — just enjoying the game in the dugout, getting to know my teammates,” Bieber said Sunday. “Everybody seems fantastic. They’ve welcomed me with open arms. I definitely want to go out there and perform my best for them and for the city.
“It’s been a long road. I try not to get too emotional thinking about it. I’ll have time in the off-season to let it all process. But it’s definitely going to be a bit emotional getting back out there.”
Bieber inched tantalizingly closer to that reality Sunday, making the fourth start of his current rehab assignment — his first in any organization other than Cleveland’s after Toronto acquired him at Thursday’s trade deadline for pitching prospect Khal Stephen — with the triple-A Buffalo Bisons on a hot afternoon at the head of the Niagara River. Targeting 70-75 pitches over five innings, Bieber threw 62 (47 strikes) over five, allowing two runs on five hits and a walk while striking out six.
“It’s just another step in the right direction. Maybe a little bit of nerves, but nothing crazy. Probably nothing compared to what it’s going to feel like pitching in Toronto,” he said afterwards. “I feel really good. I feel excited to continue to progress. Excited to be in a fresh situation. That always injects a little bit of excitement. So, everything’s going well. Body, arm, mind — everything feels great.”
As a Blue Jays scout reported back upon watching one of the right-hander’s final rehab outings in the Guardians system, he looked like Shane Bieber. Working ahead, mixing speeds, changing eye levels. He earned six swinging strikes and got hitters to chase nearly half the pitches he located outside the zone.
Only four of the 12 balls put in play against him were hard-hit, as Bieber’s velocity and pitch action held throughout. And his release points were tightly clustered, as always:
“I felt like I was just getting into the flow of things — I’m happy to feel that. I think that’s a great sign. I wasn’t overthrowing. And the velocity was holding,” Bieber said. “Always room to improve and things to get better at. But keeping everything in perspective and looking at it objectively, I’m very happy with today.”
Bieber allowed his first run in the second inning, walking a batter, letting him advance to second on a balk, and watching him score on a two-out, groundball single to right. He allowed another in the third, giving up a long solo shot off a 2-1 fastball out and over the plate. At 94.4-m.p.h., it was the hardest pitch Bieber threw all afternoon.
That fastball velocity was perhaps the most encouraging aspect of the outing, as Bieber sat 92.9-m.p.h. and touched 94 six times. When his elbow began to give out in 2023, Bieber was sitting 91-m.p.h., down from the 93-94 he demonstrated in his early-to-mid 20’s. And there’s a clear correlation in the results of Bieber’s fastball — not to mention his overall game — when he’s throwing on either side of 92.5-m.p.h.:
Shane Bieber career fastball results by velocity
|
MPH |
AVG |
SLG |
wOBA |
Run Value |
|
>=93 |
.225 |
.394 |
.286 |
+18 |
|
<=92 |
.304 |
.489 |
.367 |
+3 |
We aren’t exactly pushing the bounds of baseball insight by suggesting that harder fastballs perform better than softer ones. But for a pitcher such as Bieber, who will sit below MLB’s current average fastball velocity (94.3-m.p.h.) even on his best days, that extra tick or two has proven particularly meaningful.
Turns out, an ancillary benefit of Tommy John surgery is how much time it gives other parts of the body to recover. Any MLB pitcher would feel a lot better, and throw a lot harder, if they took a year to deload. Especially a rotation-fronting starter like Bieber who threw 214.1 innings in 2019 and 213.1 between the regular season and playoffs in 2022.
“Yeah, it’s nice to feel good,” Bieber said. “I trust that [the velocity]is going to be there. And it has been there. So, I feel great. I just need to continue to execute and refine some things. But all in all, I think I’m in a really good spot.”
At his best, Bieber was a spin merchant featuring two of the best breaking weapons in the league tunnelled off a riding fastball he consistently pounded down in the zone. His slider started on plane with his heater before darting down and away from righties, generating elite chase rates in the process, while his curveball played to both sides of the platoon, dropping nearly four-and-a-half feet on its way to the plate with well above-average break to his glove-side.
When he won his Cy Young in 2020, Bieber’s breaking pitches generated whiffs over half the time hitters swung at them, and through his 12 starts in that shortened season he allowed only 13 total hits off curveballs and sliders. He worked to a 1.63 ERA, struck out a ridiculous 41.1 per cent of the batters he faced, and finished with nearly six times as many strikeouts as walks thanks to elite command that allowed him to live in the shadows of the strike zone with cutters to righties, changeups to lefties, and fastballs to everyone.
Of course, that was five years ago in a 60-game campaign that produced all kinds of wacky statistical outcomes. It doesn’t take away from Bieber’s accomplishment. But for as often as you’ll hear the phrase “former Cy Young winner Shane Bieber” during his Blue Jays tenure, no one should expect that level of domination over the next two months as he faces the best hitters in the world for the first time in 16 months.
What feels more reasonable is the 3.24 ERA he posted between 2022 and ‘23, which was good for a 122 ERA+ — or 22 per cent better than league average — when normalized for park, era, and league. That would put him in line with Michael Wacha and Carlos Rodon this season, two pitchers with very different styles that have nonetheless produced ERA’s just to either side of 3.35 and more than two fWAR for their teams.
A 3.35 ERA over, say, eight starts down the stretch would be a massive boon for the Blue Jays as they seek to secure one of the American League’s top two seeds and avoid the randomness of a wild card series. And if Bieber then went on to start a playoff game, he’d be doing something that only eight other pitchers traded at the last two deadlines have done. If he starts a second game, he’ll have done something none of them have.
That’s how rare and difference-making an acquisition like Bieber can be. That 10-start scenario at a 3.35 ERA and an average of five innings per outing would make him by far the most impactful player moved at the deadline. Particularly if the Blue Jays are scoring enough to win and popping champagne every 10 days or so come October.
And then, if you can envision a hypothetical world in which the Blue Jays use the next two-plus months to capitalize on the organizational culture and clubhouse dynamic they’ve built, selling Bieber on the people he’d work with and potential he’d have for success while playing in Toronto, the upshot of this partnership could be prolonged via a contract extension or free agent deal.
With an opportunity to work through his rust, regain a feel for making in-game adjustments amidst the pressures of competition, and enter 2026 following a proper off-season program and spring training build-up, it isn’t inconceivable that Bieber could rediscover something closer to the form that made him a Cy Young winner at best and down-ballot-vote-getting all-star at worst from 2019 through 2022.
Players of that talent and upside don’t become available often in this league. And on the rare occasions they do, as Max Fried and Corbin Burnes did last winter — those two are a year older than Bieber and entered free agency with less career fWAR than he has today — they sign contracts that will pay them somewhere from $28-33 million per season over a period of six-to-eight years.
The Blue Jays have whiffed repeatedly on attempts to sign a true ace in recent off-seasons — Burnes, Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Justin Verlander — yet are now positioned as well as ever to sell one on the benefits of living and working in their city for their organization, with a three-month exclusive negotiating window to boot.
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Whether it’s a short-term pillow deal allowing Bieber to reestablish value post-injury, or a longer one laden with incentives, opt outs, and escalators tip-toeing a risk-and-opportunity-balancing line between the two sides, there’s an opening here for the Blue Jays to finally land their rotation-fronting arm at a juncture when he’s just turned 30, fresh from a year’s rest, and motivated to reassert himself as one of the game’s best rather than, say, nearly 31, having thrown MLB’s third-most innings across the prior three seasons, and on the verge of blowing out an elbow, as Burnes would have been if he’d taken the sweeter deal the Blue Jays offered him last winter rather than going home to play for the Arizona Diamondbacks.
But we’re already galaxies ahead of ourselves here. Job one is getting Bieber stretched out, recovering well, and pitching effectively. The benefit the Blue Jays have in that pursuit is time. The club’s current rotation is healthy, functional, and effective, removing any urgency to accelerate Bieber’s progression. If he needs an extra day to bounce back between rehab starts, he can take it. If the Blue Jays want to give him an additional minor-league test to tune up his stuff, it’s an option they can choose.
And while the club hasn’t committed to it, all signs point to Bieber making another rehab start with the Bisons later this week. Blue Jays manager John Schneider’s indicated Bieber will remain in Buffalo from here and that the plan is to keep him on a regular, five-day turn. And with the Blue Jays headed west for series in Colorado and Los Angeles with off days upcoming on Thursday and next Monday, it would’ve been awkward to fit Bieber into the club’s rotation, anyway.
But a 15-games-in-16-days stretch beginning August 12 looks like an opportune time for Bieber to complete his comeback. If he stays on turn, that day could come as early as Wednesday, August 13 when the Blue Jays host the Chicago Cubs.
Of course, Bieber doesn’t want to impede horses with carts, either. But, as he sat in the Blue Jays dugout beneath sunny Toronto skies Saturday afternoon, he couldn’t help but envision what finally reaching the end of this arduous process will feel like. Even if it’s slated to come in a uniform that, less than a week ago, he never expected he’d be wearing.
“[Getting traded] can come with a lot of new feelings. For me, I just try to lean on my family, my support system, keep things in perspective. Like, it’s the same game. It’s the exact same thing. I have the same job to do. Just for a new jersey and a new city,” he said. “I just try to keep my head down and continue to put one foot in front of the other. So, today was a great step. And we’ll do it again five days from now.”
