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Five years ago, Trevor Bauer spent one sleepy morning in Cleveland’s spring training clubhouse discussing the perils of a long-term contract and why it didn’t make sense for him. Bauer was fresh off an arbitration hearing and insisted he’d never sign for multiple years because he believed one-year deals would be more lucrative in free agency.
“If players are willing to take more risk and shorter term,” Bauer told USA Today in February 2019, “they can really drive the value up.”
Two of Cleveland’s younger starting pitchers in those days were Mike Clevinger and Shane Bieber. Neither had the luxury of Bauer’s $7.5 million he made upfront for being a top-10 pick in the draft.
Bieber’s signing bonus was $420,000 and Clevinger’s was $250,000.
It’s impossible to say what impact, if any, Bauer’s career and financial views had on the rest of the staff back then. He certainly seemed to have influence over them in the clubhouse.
Nevertheless, grown men are responsible for making their own choices. Both Clevinger and Bieber rejected lucrative, long-term offers from the franchise. Both probably regret that now.
News of Bieber’s pending Tommy John surgery is devastating both for him and the club. The Guardians had decided by November they probably weren’t going to deal Bieber before this season.
Shane Bieber will have Tommy John surgery.
— Zack Meisel (@ZackMeisel) April 6, 2024
The market for starting pitching wasn’t nearly as robust as it was back at last summer’s trade deadline (when Bieber was injured) and they weren’t interested in dealing Bieber at the bottom of the market in the winter, only to turn around and have to try and trade for someone of his caliber when prices are much higher at July’s trade deadline should they remain in the division race.
So they risked it and brought him back knowing every day he was on the roster meant less they could command in a trade should they pivot and move him in July anyway. They don’t have to worry about that anymore.
For Bieber, the last year has been particularly devastating to his future earnings.
Bieber rejected a contract Cleveland presented him early in his career. I never got the exact figures, but was told it was more than the five-year, $50 million deal Blake Snell signed with Tampa Bay after he won the Cy Young Award in 2018. Bieber has since earned a Cy Young and about $30 million in his career. Whether he’ll ever get another $50 million offer, even in this escalating market, seems highly unlikely.
With free agency looming, Bieber knew how important this season was for his future. It’s why he spent the offseason at Driveline rediscovering a little bit of the velocity he’s lost over the past few years. He looked like a Cy Young candidate again in his first two starts, which looks even more remarkable now considering the pain Bieber endured through both.
He’s had significant arm/shoulder injuries in three of the past four years and likely won’t throw a pitch in a major-league game again until next July at the earliest, and August or September of next season might be more realistic.
It has become harder for small-market teams to sign players to long-term contracts that buy out their arbitration years because players feel like they are giving away too many millions up front and signing for less than what they are worth. Bieber and Clevinger, however, should be the only necessary negotiation tactic for teams trying to encourage guys to take the money — particularly pitchers.
Clevinger, like Bieber, has endured a career of arm problems. He has never made more than $8 million since leaving Cleveland. He was a free agent until re-signing with the Chicago White Sox only a few days ago.
All of this is why I’m convinced the Guardians will never sign another starting pitcher to a long-term extension, at least under this current risk-averse ownership group. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. I would argue it’s how they should operate in the current climate of pitching injuries.
Triston McKenzie averaged 90.5 mph on his fastball in his first start, down from 92.4 mph in 2023. (Alika Jenner / Getty Images)
In hindsight, lucrative extensions to Bieber and Clevinger would’ve been devastating to this team’s financial planning, just like Justin Masterson once dismissed a three-year, $45 million offer in 2014 and was out of baseball less than two years later. More recently, Triston McKenzie was close to signing an extension last spring before a late March MRI revealed a shoulder strain. The extension vanished. Now McKenzie is pitching with a tear in his UCL, the same ligament Bieber is about to have surgically repaired. His velocity was down in his first start from last year and it feels like any day now, McKenzie could succumb to the same fate.
Gavin Williams is a Scott Boras client. The Guardians already know he won’t be taking their offer. Tanner Bibee earned an extra year of service time by finishing second in Rookie of the Year voting. If he doesn’t sign an extension now, like right now, it’s probably already too late.
It’s not a terrible way for Chris Antonetti and Mike Chernoff to approach business: You will have terrific, young starters for the first five years of their career, then trade them away with one or two years of control remaining for a batch of prospects that replenish the pool for the next wave of Bibee and Williams types arms. Nobody develops pitching like Cleveland, Seattle and Tampa Bay. So lean into it. Know going in these guys aren’t going to be here for more than a few years. It at least mitigates the risk of a sunk cost in an arm that will be out of the game for 12-15 months.
Whether it’s the increased focus on velocity, the training methods, the pitch clock, the way guys are throwing sweepers/sliders or a combination of all of it, we’ve never seen pitchers getting wheeled into the operating room at this rate. Until we figure out why, there is more risk for teams like the Guardians signing pitchers to long-term deals than there is in letting them walk.
It’s an epidemic baseball has to figure out. In the short term, however, Bieber’s injury may have opened the door to something previously unthinkable: an extension. This is a club that was ready to move on from him at the deadline last year before he was injured. Now it may be able to keep him for a couple more years.
A one-plus-one deal would give Bieber the security of a few million dollars next year while he completes his rehab. In exchange, he’d give Cleveland his age 31 season in 2026 at a moderate figure. If he makes it through unscathed, he can try entering free agency fully healthy at age 32.
It’s hardly ideal, but it might be the best solution for all parties. The lucrative extension is long gone. His future in Cleveland, against all odds, doesn’t have to be.
GO DEEPER
Where do Shane Bieber and the Cleveland Guardians go from here?
(Top photo of Shane Bieber: Ezra Shaw / Getty Images)
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