Overview:
Shane Bieber reverts back to the form of his Cy Young Award-winning season of 2020 by allowing just one run in six innings in his season debut last week
A knack for spinning a baseball to the edges of home plate propelled UC Santa Barbara pitcher Shane Bieber to the Major Leagues eight summers ago.
But a more important home, he’ll tell you, kept him centered when he needed that the most.
It helped return him to the game after a torn elbow ligament spun him out of baseball entirely last year.
“I was able to rely on my support system … my family,” Bieber said last week after returning to an MLB mound for the first time in 16 months.
He made sure that wife Kara and 5-month-old son Kav were at Miami’s LoanDepot Park on Aug. 22 when he pitched the Toronto Blue Jays to a 5-2 victory.
He allowed just two hits, no walks and one run while striking out nine Marlins in a six-inning start.
The biggest emotion Bieber felt afterward wasn’t satisfaction or even relief.
He said it was one of “gratitude” for what Kara — his college sweetheart at UCSB — Kav, parents Kristine and Chris, and older brother Travis provided during his “long road” back to baseball.
“It was just awesome, sharing this moment with them,” he said.
And now the ace who pitched the Gauchos to the 2016 College World Series has the American League East-leading Blue Jays dreaming about their own World Series.
A Canadian team hasn’t made it to the championship series of America’s Pastime since Toronto won its second-straight October Classic 32 years ago.
“He raises the floor immediately,” Blue Jays manager John Schneider gushed after the win at Miami, “and he can definitely raise the ceiling pretty high for us.”
Bieber, born and bred in Southern California, is even trying to learn the words to “O Canada,” the country’s national anthem.
“I can’t rip it off for you right now, but I could sing along with it,” he said after last week’s game. “I feel like I’m getting more comfortable.”
In Arm’s Way
Bieber’s victory at Miami came in his first MLB appearance since he last pitched for the Cleveland Guardians on April 2, 2024.
He shut out the Seattle Mariners that day with another one of his six-inning, nine-strikeout gems.
But the pain in his right elbow was no April Fool’s joke.
Bieber had felt it building for a long time, having missed parts of the three seasons that followed his A.L. Cy Young Award-winning year of 2020.
“For the last few years, I was fighting myself in my head a little bit,” he said. “I don’t know if that was due to not feeling that great or just wanting to continue to achieve more.”
Enough was enough after he gutted out last year’s early season game in Seattle.
“Ultimately, I had a failing ligament,” Bieber said. “I was hoping that it was just general soreness and that it would go away.
“I think in my gut I knew what was going on. Surgery was the only option.”
Surgeons performed the Tommy John procedure to repair a torn ulnar collateral ligament in his elbow 10 days after his last game at Seattle’s T-Mobile Park.
“The hardest part was the three to four days post-surgery,” he said.
“The light was out of my eyes a little bit.”
Family, however, brightened his outlook again.
Bieber, who married Kara Maxine Kavajecz in January 2023, moved with his wife to Goodyear, Arizona, to begin his rehabilitation with the trainers at the Guardians’ player development complex.
They soon learned that another major change was entering their lives: Kara was expecting their first child.
Kav McClain — who was named as a shout-out to Kara’s mother, Heidi — was born in March, just as Shane was ramping up his throwing sessions.
“I was able to be there for her like she’s always been there for me throughout my career,” Bieber said. “Roles kind of switched.
“Obviously I was taking care of what I had to take care of rehab-wise, but I wasn’t missing any of those appointments, and sharing all those experiences with her was extremely special.
“It’s something I’ll be forever grateful for.”
Minors Adjustment
His first game back was on May 31 — just three days before he turned 30 — with a rehab outing in the Arizona Complex League.
The Rookie League hitters were no match for the Spin Doctor. Bieber struck out 10 of them in 4⅓ innings over the course of two outings.
The Guardians put him on a methodical, upward progression to High-A Lake County and then Double-A Akron.
He pitched 17 innings in seven rehab starts altogether, striking out 22, walking just three, and allowing only six earned runs for an ERA of 1.86.
But he was forced to face another one of life’s changeups in the process.
The Guardians dealt him to Toronto for pitcher Khal Stephen — one of the Blue Jays’ top minor-league prospects — in the final hours before the MLB trade deadline of July 31.
Bieber admitted to feeling “a range of emotions.”
“There’s no reason to shy away from that, right?” he said. “(Cleveland) is the only organization that I’ve known and that my family has known.”
But he also felt touched by how many in the Blue Jays’ orbit “reached out to not just myself, but my wife … That means the world to us.”
Toronto general manager Ross Atkins admitted that it was a gamble to trade for a pitcher — even a former Cy Young Award winner — who was still rehabbing a major injury.
“The risk is almost, in some ways, the exciting aspect of it because of the upside,” he said. “The upside is just so big.”
Bieber continued to toil in the minors, but now for the Blue Jays’ Triple-A farm club in Buffalo, New York.
Fitting in, however, is right up the alley of the former Gaucho.
Buffalo Bisons manager Casey Candaele, a former Lompoc High School star, noted how Bieber took part in such menial tasks as collecting balls during batting practice.
“For a guy of his stature on Major League rehab to come out on the field and just be one of the guys, that’s a testament to his character,” Candaele said. “He’s respectful of his teammates.
“It may seem like a trivial thing, but it means a lot to the players who are here.”
Nobody was more affected than Bisons pitcher Adam Macko. He sought Bieber’s counsel on everything from off-day routines to how to keep your chin up in a game that often bruises it.
“That guy would have every right to be out here and do his own thing and get out and not talk to anybody,” Macko told Sportsnet Canada reporter Kristina Rutherford. “But it wasn’t long before I realized, ‘OK, you’re a really cool guy and I can just be myself around you and be comfortable and talk baseball.’
“He’s very methodical. He has a purpose behind everything that he does.”
Pitch Perfect
Bieber’s attention to detail — even when he was a skinny teenager at Laguna Hills High School — separated him from the big-league prospects who were throwing the ball 10 mph faster.
Baseball, he admitted, had been his “outlet” as a child.
“My parents teased the term a little bit loosely, but anger issues — my fiery sense — just came from a lot of emotions, a lot of want, a lot of competitiveness,” he said.
The lack of college scholarship offers only fueled that fire.
“I was a bit overlooked in high school,” said Bieber, who went 8-4 with a 1.40 ERA, 77 strikeouts and just 16 walks during his senior season at Laguna Hills. “I was making all these decisions for my future with the feeling that I was kind of playing with house money.
“As long as I had an opportunity, I was going to take advantage of that opportunity.”
He took that mindset into the rehabilitation process.
“I know he’s going to work until he gets better,” Kara said. “His work ethic is like nobody else I know, so my worry was never that.”
Bieber has relaxed some of the meticulous regimen that became the stuff of legend at UCSB.
“It was too mentally exhausting to be counting every rep of trunk twists in warmups and all that stuff,” he said.
“Although I’m very routine-oriented, if it doesn’t go perfectly, I can still go out there and perform.”
Gaucho Great
His diligence in mastering the craft of pitching did upgrade him at UCSB from that of a recruited walk-on to the ace who won 23 games from 2014 to 2016.
Bieber ranked fifth nationally in pitching wins during his final Gaucho season with a 12-4 record. He’s also fourth in the Gaucho record books for career strikeouts (237) and seventh in ERA (2.74).
His ability to stay in control during the most dire of situations is best illustrated by the low number of bases on balls he’s allowed.
He walked just 42 batters during his 305 innings as a Gaucho and only 188 so far in the 854⅓ innings of his MLB career.
But the fire that flared within Bieber as a boy still empowers him as a big leaguer.
“Taking the mound in a big-league baseball game is a surreal experience,” he said. “It can get a little squirrely from time to time, and full of emotion.”
He admits that the regression from his Cy Young Award-winning season of 2020 put “a bit of a chip on my shoulder … I’m excited to show it.”
Bieber is especially eager to show off his improved changeup.
“A lot of guys are able to throw it slow, but I was just never able to, so I decided to change that,” he explained. “I had a firmer changeup, so I had to figure out the right grip and throw it hard and let it dive for me.”
Getting the time to work on it became the silver lining of his injury.
“I pride myself on handling adversity well,” he said. “Sometimes when you’re thrust into a new situation, it can kind of be rejuvenating.”
Thrusting a newborn baby into the routine does cut into a daddy’s sleep time, but he’s adjusted to that, as well.
“It’s all joy, no matter what,” Bieber said. “I can’t imagine not having him in our family.
“He’s really allowed us to grow and step up as adults, obviously.
“It’s quite the responsibility, but we were ready for it, and he just gives us a lot more meaning.”
The injury — and the family that got him through it — also gave Shane Bieber some new perspective about himself.
“Baseball is what I do,” he said, “but it’s not who I am.”
The person he is, however, is what helped put him back in the game.
