Shane Bieber's Injury Raises Questions About Potential Future With Cleveland Guardians

The baseball world took quite the blow over the weekend, with Cleveland Guardians ace Shane Bieber and Atlanta Braves hurler Spencer Strider both suffering potentially season-ending UCL injuries.

While much of the conversation has shifted to the increase in pitcher injuries, the pitch clock, sticky stuff and the future of the sport as a whole, the individual players' outlooks shouldn't get overlooked.

Strider is 25 years old, just now breaking into his prime. Since the Braves owe him at least $73 million over the next five years, the right-hander will at least be in a comfortable position as he works his way back from his elbow injury.

Bieber, on the other hand, is not so lucky.

The righty is a month away from turning 29. By the time he returns from his upcoming Tommy John surgery, he'll be over 30.

And to make matters worse, Bieber is scheduled to hit free agency this coming winter.

The Guardians never signed Bieber to an extension, simply avoiding arbitration each offseason, although The Athletic recently reported that they once offered him a contract that exceeded $50 million over five years. Bieber's $31 million in career earnings are nothing to sneeze at, but considering the situation he's about to face, he and his agent surely wish they could have gotten more.

Free agency wasn't very kind to veteran pitchers this past offseason, with Blake Snell and Jordan Montgomery unable to find deals until the very end of Spring Training. And when they did put pen to paper, they did so for short-term contracts worth just a fraction of what they had initially asked for.

Sure, Yoshinobu Yamamoto cashed in with the Los Angeles Dodgers, but he was 25 years old.

Snell and Montgomery settled for two-year deals, while Sonny Gray got three years from the St. Louis Cardinals. Aaron Nola was the only pitcher to get more than $80 million guaranteed and the only one over 30 to get more than four years.

All of those pitchers were healthy when they hit free agency, and their injury histories weren't exactly extensive. Bieber won't have that luxury, as he will be just seven months removed from Tommy John at the end of the 2024 season, in addition to missing large portions of both 2021 and 2023.

When healthy, Bieber has proven to be one of the best pitchers in the game. Since 2019, he is 51-27 with a 3.02 ERA, 1.081 WHIP, 10.4 strikeouts per nine innings and a 16.7 WAR. He won the AL Cy Young in 2020 after finishing fourth in the race in 2019, and he came in seventh in 2022.

Bieber looked to be well on his way to another Cy Young-caliber campaign in 2024, opening the season with a pair of scoreless, 6.0-inning starts.

But given his injuries, Bieber is unlikely to get paid like the ace he is this offseason.

The two-time All-Star now faces a dilemma – take a low-ball deal from the Guardians and go through rehab in a familiar environment, or test his luck on the open market.

The first option is similar to what Germán Márquez did with the Colorado Rockies in 2023. Márquez made four starts early in the season, had Tommy John in May, then inked a two-year, $20 million extension in September. He had spent his whole MLB career in Colorado, making an All-Star Game in 2021, and he made sure to stick around as he dealt with his injury.

Tyler Mahle, meanwhile, made just five starts for the Minnesota Twins in 2023 before undergoing Tommy John surgery. Instead of re-upping with the Twins – with whom he had only spent parts of two seasons – he entered free agency and got a two-year, $22 million deal from the Texas Rangers.

Bieber is better than both Márquez and Mahle, but given their similar ages and timing of their injuries, they are interesting cases to study.

Márquez was able to get $10 million in incentives built into his contract, while Mahle got $5 million. It obviously remains to be seen if they can hit the required benchmarks to reap those rewards.

Bieber, like Márquez with the Rockies, has been with the Guardians since they selected him in the fourth round of the 2016 MLB Draft. And given the roadblocks Snell and Montgomery faced in free agency last year, staying in Cleveland certainly seems like the more comfortable play for Bieber.

But Mahle proved that landing a deal as a 29-year-old free agent recovering from Tommy John wasn't impossible, and surely Bieber could get more money than him.

Baseball is changing every day, though, and pitchers are staring that change in the face every single day. Bieber has a few months to think things over, but there will be plenty at stake when he does have to lock in a decision.

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