A necessity will require some willingness to spend
It’s time to address the elephant in the room: the Cleveland Guardians badly need starting pitching, and unless they spend some money, there isn’t much help on the horizon.
Now that I have your attention…it really is that serious. As it stands, the 2025 Guardians are in dire straits in the starting pitching department with what they have currently under contract. The following is a list of pitchers who gave Cleveland starting pitcher innings that are still signed to the team: Tanner Bibee, Ben Lively, Logan Allen, Gavin Williams, and Triston McKenzie. That is…bleak. It doesn’t have to be, though.
Per Zack Meisel, there is mutual interest between the club and all of Shane Bieber, Matthew Boyd, and Alex Cobb in returning for 2025. The always prevalent issue, however, will rear its ugly head: how willing is Paul Dolan going to be to spend? We’re going to spend the rest of this article pretending that the owner and Ohio native would be willing to spend some dough.
In a perfect world, all three come back, but that could be asking for too much. However, two of the three is ideal so long as one of those two is Shane Bieber, but Matthew Boyd is the preferred second arm. Bringing back Bieber would be an incredible victory for the offseason and a sign that both this ownership group and front office are ready to build off of the success of 2024 and address the Achilles heel that crushed this team in the Postseason. With attendance up once again and two rounds’ worth of playoff gates, there’s no excuse not to.
The 2024 Postseason for the Guardians was a thrill ride. From the pair of Thomas grand slams against the Tigers to the Noel and Fry heroics against New York, it’s a team we won’t soon forget. Despite that, the starting pitching was almost non-existent all run long, and it eventually wore down a great bullpen. Is Vogt at fault? Not necessarily. A historically good bullpen had been covering up a major weakness for this team all season long. Essentially, the bullpen was simply just asked to do in October what they had to do in the regular season.
The Guardians had just 16 games that saw starting pitchers record an out in the 7th inning. it was the second fewest of any team in baseball, second to just the Miami Marlins who either had starters get hurt or traded away by the trade deadline. Carlos Carrasco, Triston McKenzie, and Logan Allen, three players who didn’t see the roster past the end of August, covered 276.2 innings this season for a combined 5.53 ERA and 5.68 FIP.
For reference, Logan Webb and Tarik Skubal had 15 starts each where they pitched into the 7th inning.
Across 10 games in the ALDS and ALCS, Cleveland’s starting pitchers tossed just 35.1 innings. Only the Tigers recorded fewer innings (25) among teams to play in multiple series, and Detroit played three fewer games. Naturally, the Division Series being spaced out the way it was favored Cleveland leaning heavily on their historic bullpen, but even then, half of the outings from starting pitchers went three innings or fewer in the playoffs.
Not having Shane Bieber was rough for a team that desperately needed their ace come the Postseason as Tanner Bibee and Matthew Boyd were the only starters to turn in outings that went 5+ innings. Frankly, the importance and impact of Shane Bieber to this ball club is not able to be measured in financial worth.
Bieber had Tommy John surgery back in April to repair an injured elbow. Austin Hedges detailed to Chris Rose on his podcast that Bieber was pitching through “excruciating pain” in Seattle, fighting through tears to gut out six of the best innings a Guardians pitcher tossed all season.
Paying Bieber is not a matter of “should we?” but simply a matter of “for how long?”. Despite pitching through an injury for at least one start, Bieber’s stuff looked much better, and his new and improved changeup was a major reason why:
The whiff rate is a small sample size, sure, but with the improved movement horizontally on top of a near +2 mph difference in velocity, Bieber’s turbo changeup became a legitimate weapon.
After having his slider and knuckle curve register 40+% whiff rates in 2022, Bieber didn’t have a single pitch register above a 33% whiff rate in 2023, but in those first two starts in 2024, he had two above 40% once again with his slider running at 64%. Having a second swing-and-miss pitch develop that breaks the other direction made Bieber’s slider even better.
Bieber will likely miss a little bit of time to start 2025, and with the shoulder injury in 2021 that lingered throughout 2022 coupled with the elbow injury that required surgery, Bieber’s first trip around the free agency market may come in a more ‘prove it’ variety than the potential six-year deal Spotrac thinks he may get. I do believe, however, their average annual salary feels about spot on at $24.5 million. A two to three year backloaded deal with a player option on the final year feels optimal.
Deal: 3 years, $75 million (player option for year 3) | $25 million avg per season
Yr 1: $19.5 million
Yr 2: $26.5 million
Yr 3: $29 million
This will let Bieber hit free agency again at 32.
Matthew Boyd was as important to the late season success for the Guardians as anyone, and he was lights out in October as well. Across three playoff starts, Boyd tossed 11.1 innings, allowing just one run and striking out 14. The Guardians won two of those three starts, and overall, Cleveland went 8-3 across 11 starts from Boyd in both the regular and postseason, and across 51.1 innings, he pitched to a 2.28 ERA with 60 strikeouts. Mind you, he had not pitched in over a year, and the past four seasons saw Boyd pitch to the tune of a 5.00 ERA since 2020 without registering more than 80 innings in any season.
Getting Alex Cobb back would also be huge for depth, but Boyd returning is a projection changer for this team in 2025. Boyd is projected to get a one-year deal after signing with Cleveland for just $740,000 this season. Boyd’s projected value for the season is set at $3.2 million per Spotrac. I assume it’ll be higher.
Deal: 1 year, $4.4 million
Above all else, these two arms are what not only makes 2025 feel like a repeatable season to 2024, but it could be a start to what adds stability and longevity to a rotation sorely needing it. Having a rotation that starts with Bieber and Bibee roll into Boyd inspires a lot more confidence when Lively and Williams round out the rotation rather than be in the thick of it.