Five-hundred days is a long time to think about throwing that first pitch in a Major League Baseball game again.
Toronto Blue Jays right-hander Shane Bieber is preparing for his first outing with his new team on Friday. All that’s transpired since his last one is a major elbow surgery, a long recovery process, and a trade away from the Cleveland Guardians, the only organization he’d ever known.
The former Cy Young Award winner is joining a first-place team in the middle of a pennant race, and he’ll be a free agent at the end of the season, so there’s pressure both from a team and individual perspective.
So as he gets set to face a sneaky-potent young Miami Marlins lineup, how is Bieber feeling?
On Friday, Sportsnet’s Kristina Rutherford profiled Bieber in his return, and the 30-year-old expressed his excitement to join in on such a high-pressure stretch run.
“I’m confident in the work that I put in, I’m confident in who I am as a competitor, and I think I have shown how I can be and how I can help the Blue Jays at the big-league level,” Bieber told Rutherford.
He then paused for a moment and told her, “So, yeah, we’ll see.”
At his peak, Bieber was undoubtedly among the best of the best, making the All-Star team in the 2019 and 2021 seasons sandwiched around his Cy Young in the COVID-shortened 2020 season. But the last time we saw him for most of a season, in 2023, he was only slightly above league average (112 ERA+).
The Blue Jays are betting big on Bieber to come back stronger than ever, and he pitched well enough on his rehab assignments to boost that confidence considerably. But the eyes of Canada will still be watching closely to see how he reacts to the real thing.
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