The Guardians have placed right-hander Tanner Bibee on the 15-day injured list due to right hip inflammation, per Zack Meisel of The Athletic. Right-hander James Karinchak has been recalled in a corresponding move. With only two weeks remaining on the schedule, this move brings Bibee’s season to an end.
The Guards came into 2023 with their sights set on contention after winning the Central last year, but it seems they will ultimately fall short of that goal, currently seven games back of the Twins in the division and further out in the Wild Card picture. A significant issue for the club’s disappointing season has been the starting rotation. Shane Bieber, Triston McKenzie and Cal Quantrill all missed significant time due to injuries, while other pitchers struggled to fill the void.
The club fell in the standings and seemed to wave a white flag when they traded Aaron Civale to the Rays at the deadline. But they hovered close enough to contention in August that they grabbed Lucas Giolito off waivers from the Angels to try to mount a late-season charge that hasn’t really come to fruition.
The club was forced to turn to rookies like Bibee, Gavin Williams and Logan Allen in order to fill the void earlier in the year. Bibee has been the relative workhorse of the staff, with his 25 starts and 142 innings pitched both leading the club amid all the turmoil. It was a very successful first season for him, as he posted a 2.98 earned run average in that time, striking out 24.1% of opponents while limiting walks to a 7.7% clip.
Since he’s going to miss the remainder of the year, those stats will now go down as the totality of his work for the season. The Guardians should now be able to go into the winter with their 2024 rotation picture looking strong, at least on paper. Bieber and McKenzie are both currently on rehab assignments and will hopefully have better injury luck next year. McKenzie will qualify for arbitration this winter while Bieber is set for his final arb year. Bieber has been speculated as a trade candidate since the Guards frequently trade away pitchers as they get more expensive and closer to free agency, but his value is at a low ebb due to his health concerns and diminished results this year. He’ll also be making a significant salary, due a raise on this year’s $10.01MM figure.
But alongside those two and Quantrill, who is also arb eligible, the Guards should be encouraged by the development of their rookies. In addition to Bibee’s aforementioned results, Allen posted a 3.60 ERA over 23 starts while Williams has a 3.29 ERA in his 16 outings. That gives them six viable starters in next year’s mix.
Without Bibee, the Guards may need another starter to slot into the rotation for the final two weeks alongside Williams, Allen, Giolito and Quantrill. As mentioned, Bieber and McKenzie are on rehab assignments and could be reinstated. Joey Cantillo, Hunter Gaddis and Cody Morris are also on the 40-man and in Triple-A, though Morris has been pitching shorter stints out of the bullpen lately.
I get the feeling he wants to play, but his trainers are treating him like a baby
Nah. Francona let him go out again after the initial injury on Saturday, but then they had to pull him shortly afterwards after Willis noticed that the injury was painful enough to affect his mechanics. If they’d just pulled him, he might have been able to come back.
I guess the pun fell flat when the logic part came in…
…oh xD
Spelling it like his name might’ve helped, lmao.
I was looking forward to seeing him pitch this Thursday before this was announced. What a rookie season for Bibee though
Sucks for the Guards. Silver lining though is that this news hopefully ends the absurdity that was conversations of him as a ROY frontrunner.
I think he’s a reasonable 2nd/3rd place candidate, but Henderson is running away with the ALROY award
The pitching is fine.
The problems are….
1. The love affair with LH hitters leaving the line-up overbalanced so that their LH hitters are guaranteed to see LH pitchers in critical game situations. Their few RH batters don’t especially hit LH pitchers well enough to discourage teams from using them. Nolan Jones with the Rockies and Will Benson with the Reds did a lot better after being traded by the Guardians and then batting in a balanced line-up.
2. As with their stubbornness with LH hitters, they still insist on making trades with the Rays and allowing them to take Cleveland’s youngsters that have been released or available for the Rule 5 draft. The Rays coaching staff gets ahold of the same guys and almost instantly makes them productive contributors to a contending team (this has been going on for years). In fact, they traded Civale for a line-drive 1B prospect that appears to have the profile of a younger version of Jake Bauers….who they traded RH hitting multi-year All-Star Yandy Diaz for – he of the .319 / .398 / .503 / .901 slash with a 155 wRC+ that Cleveland can only dream of.
3. The coaching staff other than those coaching the pitchers – particularly the Hitting coach .
4. The ballyhooed multiple middle infield prospects that came up and thus far have proven to be pretty awful (the prospect rankings loved them though).
5. Terry Francona seems to be out of sorts. Understandable as he’s hurting.
P.S. Going into the season I thought the Guardians would be right behind the Orioles as a coming impact AL power. Carrying a team on pitching alone doesn’t work well when a few guys get injured.
My bad.
A pretty good summary, although I don’t agree with it all.
The number one problem in Cleveland is the FOs refusal to trade its excess ballyhooed
prospects.
At the beginning of 2022 the Guardians had SIXTEEN shortstops, either on the MLB roster or well regarded upper level prospects. They also had SIX lefthand hitting RF/1B candidates that were well regarded.
They had EIGHT prospects listed on various lists.
And, of course, they had SP prospects up the kazoo, stacked behind a above average and fairly young) rotation.
And yet, they couldn’t (wouldnt) put together a package for a major RH bat.
They wait…and wait…and wait…until their upper level prospects lose almost all their trade value, and those prospects run out of options.
Somebody in Cleveland hasn’t gotten the memo that MLB doesn’t give trophies out for having the youngest roster or the highest rated farm system.
Weird season for the Cleveland
The Spiders are being exterminated in Cleveland!
You bet your sweet Bibee !!
I don’t like that Civale trade for them.
Can’t change your opinion on it but I’m waiting to see what Manzardo does at the big league level before I make a decision. We won’t know the outcome of this trade for several years.
I thought the same thing about the Clevenger trade to SD, but if you look at that trade, we came out pretty well and it still hasn’t finished. Cantillo should be up next year and hopefully make a difference. Again, we’ll see.
Samuel (above) sure touched on some issues. My take is Francona has no feel. His moves are very predictable. Like today, again. “..because its the 8th inning…’
The Front office gave up on 2023 while being half-game out on Trade Deadline Eve. On top of that, they added a lH 1B , which is way down any ‘need list’. The other moves were salary dumps. Pathetic and insulting to fans.
Having ‘highly rated’ farm is reading material. Front office has done nothing with all those promises. As Antonetti says ..”aquisition cost’ is what has stopped them. Pathetic.