Shane Bieber progressing well in his rehab in hopes for All-Star Break return

NBC Sports

03-03-2025

GOODYEAR, Arizona, March 3, 2025 — For the first time since 2018, Shane Bieber is not attending Guardians' spring training as the favorite to start on Opening Day. He won't even begin the season as a member of the active roster. Instead, the seven-year veteran is simply focused on getting back on the mound after undergoing Tommy John surgery on April 12th of last year.
After the 2023 season, the veteran had been diagnosed with a slight tear in his elbow but had a rehab plan and was even able to make his final two starts of the 2023 season. 'I had a normal off season and worked my ass off, to be frank,' Bieber recalled. 'I felt really great. Had a fantastic spring training. Everything was ticking back up to, kind of, a place of normalcy and where I expected to perform and to be.'
In fact, the 2024 season couldn't have started much better for Bieber. He pitched 12 scoreless innings in his first two starts of the year, striking out 20 batters and walking only one. The velocity on his four-seam fastball was the highest it had been since 2021, his slider was graded by pitch models as the best it had ever been, and he seemed to finally land on a changeup grip that worked for him.
However, the pain in his elbow became too much to ignore, and Bieber and the Guardians decided that surgery was the best course of action. That kicked off an eight-month process that involved the operation, recovery, rehab, and contract negotiations before Bieber decided in mid-December to rejoin the Guardians on a one-year deal and maintain the relationships that had meant so much to him, even during an incredibly difficult season.
'I had that opportunity to reflect [this off-season],' recalled Bieber, 'but with that being said, I really do believe that my injury was a result of a number of factors. I don't think I was doing anything wrong. I think a big part of being an athlete is, unfortunately, that you have to deal with injuries. Throwing a baseball overhead at a high velocity is not a normal thing for a shoulder or elbow to endure time and time again, so I think there was a little bit of a factor of inevitability... I've always felt comfortable with my routine in season, and it's worked for a long time. I was just kind of battling this for a little bit longer than I would have liked, so we had to address it surgically.'
Eric Samulski,
That level-headed approach has been crucial to Bieber's success during his rehab. He's currently following a joint program created by Dr. Keith Meister, who performed the surgery, and the Guardians. The two entities have been working closely together to track Bieber's progress and ensure that everybody is focused on the long-term outlook and not rushing to get back on the mound, regardless of how well things are going.
'Honestly, when I try and get ahead of myself, they reel me back in,' laughed Bieber. 'It's a good combination. I think that's the best way to go about things. I'll push, and they'll pull...If I feel like I'm ready, and then they make me wait one or two more weeks, I'll be in an even better spot...But things are going really smoothly, progressing smoothly.'
So far, that progression has advanced to the point where Bieber is throwing bullpens utilizing two different fastballs, his four-seamer and his cutter. He anticipates adding more pitches when he has his next bullpen on Tuesday, and then he'll throw another bullpen on Friday before the team decides on the next course of action.
'When I first got surgery, we were thinking [I would return] right around the All-Star Break,' said Bieber. 'It's a bit conservative but a good spot to target. I don't want to get myself in trouble and try and beat any dates, and that's why they kind of won't give them to me.'
When you look back at how Bieber's 2024 season began, it's easy to see why the soon-to-be 30-year-old is eager to get back on the mound.
'I think, for me, before I got hurt last year, I was in a really good spot. My stuff was in a place where I felt most comfortable competing and just having a blast doing so.' With his fastball velocity increasing, he felt as if it 'led to everything else ticking up as well. So I was able to throw a lot more different combinations and just enjoy playing with kind of those newfound tools.'
One of those new tools was a dynamic changeup. Since 2018, the most Bieber had ever used a changeup was 9% of the time back in the COVID-shortened 2020 season. Back then, the pitch was 88.7 mph, with 16.3 inches of horizontal movement and 5.3 inches of drop. It graded out as a below-average pitch by Pitcher List's PLV metric in part because Bieber had just a 29 percent zone rate on it, well below the league average of 36 percent. He also had a below-average strike rate on it, so even though the pitch had a solid 21 percent swinging strike rate, it was never a huge part of his arsenal.
By 2021, he was throwing the pitch just five percent of the time and then two percent of the time by 2023. Yet, it came back with a vengeance in 2024, mostly thanks to a new grip.
'For a long time, I've tried to kill speed on my change-up, and I just can't do it,' explained Bieber. 'I can't really do it on any of my pitches. They just come out how they come out, and so we stopped fighting it and tried to just say, 'Okay, well, if it's gonna be 88 to 90, let's make it short and late, give a different feel, and try and get it as much depth as possible.''
In practice, that meant Bieber was throwing the pitch 89 mph but with slightly less movement, both vertically and horizontally, than he had in 2021. The 'late' movement he references also tied back to the grip change, which allowed the changeup to almost fall off the table later on its journey to home plate, without the small 'hump' that had characterized its movement profile before. Now, the pitch almost seemed to vanish right before it approached the hitter.
The zone rate on the pitch was still low, but the strike rate climbed up around league average, and the swinging strike rate was nearly 23 percent. He threw it to lefties and righties alike, which he had not done in 2020, but he also decided to use it as more of a two-strike offering, taking advantage of its low zone rate and high swinging strike rate. In 2020, he threw the pitch in two-strike counts just 10.4 percent of the time, but last year, he threw it in two-strike counts 23% of the time with a 60 percent PutAway rate.
Obviously, 12 innings is an incredibly small sample size, but it was clear to anybody, including Bieber himself, that it was working. 'I got immediate feedback from hitters that [the modification] was the right move and that it was working. And so I had a lot of fun doing it.'
Bieber also made small changes to the way he used his slider and his cutter in 2024. Partially due to the increased velocity, Bieber started to attack lefties with his cutter up in the zone over 17 percent more than he had in 2023. Considering he was also throwing the four-seamer up in the zone to lefties more than he had before, he was able to create more deception on his fastball variations than he had ever had. As a result, he saw his swinging strike rate on four-seamer against lefties jump from 3.6 percent to 14.7 percent.
Again, these are small sample sizes, but they are also evidence of a veteran pitcher seeing how his stuff is playing differently and making adjustments to take advantage of that. 'I always pride myself on being malleable out there on the mound with the way I throw and attack hitters,' said Bieber. 'I'm excited to be able to do that when that time comes, as I'm reintroducing pitches in my bullpens. Once I get into live BP and see where all my stuff's at, then I think I'll make adjustments from there.'
'Last year. I got back to a place where I was throwing a lot of different sequences and reading swings. Going into games, obviously, you have a plan of attack, and you throw a certain pitch, and you get feedback from a hitter, and you go off of that. You continue to do that over and over, and so I feel like I can attack hitters in a bunch of different ways. That's one of my favorite things about pitching. So I'm excited to get back there.'
The Guardians, their fans, and fantasy managers are excited for Bieber to get back out there as well. Even though the All-Star Break feels like a long way away, that will give Bieber over two months in the rotation and almost 10 starts, even if he doesn't beat that conservative timeline. Given how good he looked last year and how excited he seems to be with what he learned from those two starts, that makes Bieber one of the better IL stashes you can draft in most fantasy formats.
'As hard as it is, I'm just trying to put one foot in front of the other,' he said. 'The most important thing is to keep my head down and continue to progress smoothly. I think as long as I do that, I'll be in a great spot.' And so will fantasy managers who roster him for the final few months of the season.