Cleveland Guardians' Ace Joins Elite Company with Dominant Opening Day Performance

The Cleveland Guardians shut out the Oakland Athletics on Thursday night, 8-0, to begin the 2024 season on the right note.

Offensively, Cleveland clubbed out 11 hits, with David Fry and Tyler Freeman both registering multi-hit games, but the real story was the pitching dominance of Shane Bieber.

The former Cy Young winner went 6.0 innings in the win, surrendering no runs on just four hits. He walked one and struck out 11.

With the great performance, Bieber joined an elite list in baseball history.

Per Sarah Langs of MLB.com:

SHANE BIEBER

his 3rd career 10-strikeout game on Opening Day, tying Bob Gibson, Pedro Martinez, Felix Hernandez and Max Scherzer for 2nd-most, behind only:

Randy Johnson: 4

Bieber spent the offseason working out Driveline Baseball in Washington in an effort to get back to the version of himself that we saw last night. Reports on social media indicated his velocity was up from a season ago. Last year, Bieber went just 6-6, making only 21 starts because of injury. He pitched to a 3.80 ERA which is well North of his career ERA of 3.25.

He won the Cy Young during the COVID 2020 season by going 8-1 with a 1.63 ERA.

The Guardians are coming off a season in which they finished third in the American League Central. Under new manager Stephen Vogt, they are looking for a return trip to the playoffs after a year off.

The two teams will play again on Friday night in Oakland with first pitch scheduled for 9:40 p.m. ET. Logan Allen (CLE) pitches against Ross Stripling (OAK).

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