By: Jeremy Lawless

Shane Bieber gave up 7 earned runs in 4+ innings during Game 1 of the Wild Card Series against the New York Yankees in Cleveland last week. It was by far the worst outing of 2020 for Bieber and in fact, those 7 runs are half the amount of runs the Tribe ace gave up over the course of his 12 starts in 2020. 

This doesn’t mean that Bieber’s year is a complete loss though.

On October 5th, the first of many anticipated individual awards that Shane Bieber will be receiving was announced. Bieber was appropriately named Baseball Digest’s MLB Pitcher of the Year. The third time an Indians pitcher has ever won the award after Cliff Lee (2008) and Corey Kluber (2017). 

Baseball Digest has been awarding the best pitcher in MLB since 1994. Bieber bested Yu Darvish and his friend and former teammate Trevor Bauer for the award in 2020.

Shane Bieber took the Central divisions by storm this year securing the first MLB pitching Triple Crown for the first time in Indians history and the first American League Triple Crown since Bob Feller in 1940. The last time the MLB Triple Crown was achieved was by Johan Santana in 2006. 

The most recent American League Triple Crown winner was Justin Verlander in 2011 for the Detroit Tigers.

In an offseason where the Indians appear to heading into a gigantic salary dump-a-thon, the Indians will more than likely try to lock up their Ace via extension. The ideal extension for the Tribe is probably not unlike the 5 year 38.5 million with two team options that the club gave Corey Kluber in 2015. With incentives and options the deal was worth up to 77 million over 7 years. 

The Indians opted to not make the decision on those team options and traded Kluber to the Rangers for Emmanuel Clase and Delino Deshields Jr. before the 2020 season.

Its clear that Bieber is a dominant force in the regular season and Central divisions but his poor performance in the postseason leaves a shadow of a doubt that Chernoff and Antonetti should capitalize on. 

It’s a definite possibility that Bieber will choose to take the path of his buddy Trevor Bauer and play out his contract through Arbitration and take advantage of Free Agency after the 2024 season, at just 29 years old. 

Let’s hope that the Front Office doesn’t just tell us to “Enjoy Him” as well.