Guardians shift Shane Bieber's rehab assignment as road to Cleveland continues

The last time we saw Shane Bieber on a major league mound, he was turning T-Mobile Park into his playground in six dominant innings against the Seattle Mariners in April 2024 before his season was blown up thanks to Tommy John surgery. 

After 14 months of waiting, we finally have an idea of when he’ll be back on the mound. 

After making his first rehab start at the Rookie-level Arizona complex league over the weekend, Bieber will be making a rehab start with the Double-A Akron RubberDucks on Friday in a huge step toward his quest toward returning toward the Guardians.

Shane Bieber takes crucial next step in return to Guardians after Tommy John surgery

Bieber tossed 2 1/3 scoreless innings in the Arizona Complex League and allowed one single with five strikeouts, and his fastball sat around 92-94 miles per hour. 

Pitchers can spend 30 days on a rehab assignment, so, if everything goes well, Bieber could make his return to the Guardians at the end of June or beginning of July. 

Last year the Guardians got eight starts out of Matthew Boyd after he made his mid-season return from an elbow injury; they could get double that from Bieber this year. 

He’d obviously be a huge boost to the Guardians rotation. Cleveland’s starters had a 4.84 ERA in March/April but turned things around in May (3.60 ERA). 

Bieber could also add some stability to a unit that’s anything but stable right now. The good news is that Tanner Bibee, Gavin Williams and Luis Ortiz have pitched better as of late.

The bad news is that they don’t have a No. 5 starter due to Ben Lively’s injury and have also been seemingly doing everything in their power to not have Logan Allen make a start. 

They recently sent Joey Cantillo down to Triple-A to stretch him out as a starter after he opened the season in the bullpen, but that only fills one of those holes. 

Bieber could fill the other — so long as he’s healthy. 

“We have a pretty good plan in place,” Guardians president of baseball operations Chris Antonetti said, per MLB.com’s Tim Stebbins. “But the one thing we want to make sure — especially with Tommy John — is that we're really deliberate in helping him get back to a point where, once he returns, he's able to pitch for the balance of the season without issues. So we'll try to be thoughtful with that, continue to lean on our medical group for their guidance on what that looks like.”

It feels like it’s been forever since we got to see Bieber at his best. 

While he opened the year with 12 scoreless innings last year, he did it on the west coast when most of the fanbase was sleeping. 

He was great in 2022 (2.88 ERA in 200 innings), but posted a pedestrian (by his standards) 3.80 ERA in 1222 innings in 2023. 

The other part of that equation was his contract situation. Bieber entered last year as an impending free agent and seemed like a lock to get traded in July.

But now he’s back in Cleveland on a $10 million deal for this year that includes a $16 million player option for next year along with a $4 million buyout. 

Getting Bieber back would be a win for the Guardians regardless of how “ace-like” he is right when he gets back. 

From the moment that he won his Cy Young in the shortened 2020 season, he’s had to pitch around injuries, contract talks and trade rumors. 

This will be the first year since where the main storylines around Bieber will be about his pitching as opposed to how every start impacts his trade value or his future.

The Guardians will be better for it.