2018 Season in Review
Shane Bieber forced his way into the Indians rotation early last season as a 22-year old rookie with just a year and a half of experience in the minor leagues. He posted such gaudy numbers at the Double-A and Triple-A level (1.16 and 1.66 ERA, respectively) that the Tribe had no choice but to slot him in the rotation alongside Corey Kluber, Carlos Carrasco, Trevor Bauer and Mike Clevinger, completing the best rotation in MLB.
Bieber pitched well enough at the MLB level after his call up to keep his spot, but ultimately the results were a bit disappointing. After posting such gaudy minor league numbers, Bieber’s ERA ballooned to 4.55 as he was plagued by some home run issues (1.02 HR/9) and strand rate issues (stranded 69 percent of baserunners after sitting above 80 percent in the minors).
Bieber’s biggest standout skill as a pitcher throughout his professional career has been his minuscule walk rate. He issued a free pass to just 4.5 percent of the batters he faced last season, a mark that tied him for the 8th lowest mark in baseball among starting pitchers that threw at least 100 innings. I expect that number to stay great in 2019, as Bieber finished 17th in first-pitch strike percentage with a 66.1 percent rate, and 9th in MLB with a 47.9 percent zone rate. Shane Bieber pounds the strike zone.
Of course, it is possible, though very rare, to throw too many strikes. While Bieber did a fantastic job of limiting walks and his strikeout rate of 25.3 percent was more than respectable, when hitters did make contact the hit the ball extremely hard. Bieber gave up hard contact 43.3 percent of the time when hitters put bat to ball, the 5th worst mark in MLB, and induced soft contact just 10.5 percent of the time, the worst mark of any pitcher in the league that threw a minimum of 100-innings. It wasn’t all bad, as his 45 percent ground ball rate was around league average, and he prevented opposing hitters from pulling the ball which helped keep his home run to fly ball ratio at a manageable level.
2019 Breakout?
So, what to expect from Shane Bieber in 2019? And why do I have him ranked 18 spots above the consensus NFBC rank? Let’s start at the top.
He’s got the Indians’ 5th starter job locked up, which most people recognize, but one place where I really diverge in my projection is Bieber’s expected innings pitched. Most systems have Bieber projected to throw 150 innings next season, whereas I have him projected for 190. Bieber hasn’t been in professional baseball long, but he’s been extremely healthy in his two full seasons of pro ball. In 2017 Bieber threw 173 innings across three minor league stops, and then last year in 2018 Bieber threw 194 innings including 115 in the Major Leagues. There should be absolutely no cap on workload and healthy starters who take the ball every five days generally get close to 200-innings, so I’m more than comfortable with my projection there.
In terms of his performance on the mound, how can Bieber improve? For one, he doesn’t need to change a lot. Bieber’s strike throwing ways have gotten the job done well enough, and even if he’s basically the exact same pitcher he was last year, he should get close to finishing as a top 20 starting pitcher if healthy. But I believe there is another level here, and it should be fairly easy to achieve. Bieber doesn’t need a new pitch or even to improve his current arsenal like some pitchers do, he simply needs to make one of the easy adjustments for a pitcher: change his pitch mix.
Bieber featured a 3-pitch mix in 2018, throwing his 4-seam fastball 57 percent of the time, his slider 23 percent and a curveball 16 percent (he also mixed in a changeup on four percent of his pitches). That’s not an unusual or remarkable pitch mix, and he made it work well enough. But a simple tweak of throwing more sliders instead of fastballs would likely pay huge dividends in Bieber’s results. Bieber’s slider graded out as one of the very best pitches in 2018 – hitters whiffed a stunning 43 percent of the time they offered at the pitch, which ranked 16th out of 117 starting pitchers who threw at least 200 sliders last year. That’s an impressive mark, and it gets even better when you realize Bieber threw the pitch for strikes with a top 25 percentile called strike rate on the pitch. Perhaps most notably, hitters offered at the pitch a whopping 62 percent of the time, the highest mark of any starting pitcher in MLB. You add it all together and you have a pitch that hitters have an extremely difficult time laying off and that they are regularly whiffing at when they do swing. That’s a deadly combination, especially when you can get called strikes with the pitch as well.
We’ve seen this type of change from pitchers in the past, most notably from Patrick Corbin who dramatically increased the usage of his slider in 2017 and then kept it up in 2018. Corbin threw the slider just 26 percent of the time from 2013-2016, then increased it to 38 percent in 2017 and 41.5 percent in 2018. The simple change propelled Corbin into being one of the best pitchers of last year and transformed him from a league average starter to a pitcher deemed worthy of a 6-year, $140 million dollar contract.
It really should be that simple for Shane Bieber, and it’s not like he doesn’t have teammates on his own staff that should be able to help guide him that way. Trevor Bauer is one of the most intelligent pitchers in baseball and has gradually reduced his fastball usage over the year. Corey Kluber relies heavily on his breaking balls, and Mike Clevinger has one of the best sliders in the league as well that he throws a high percentage of the time. There’s even some chance Bieber has developed his changeup over the offseason, something we know was a focus of Bauer.
A strike throwing machine with one of the best pitches in baseball at his disposal, Bieber is a simple adjustment away from entering the upper-echelon of starting pitchers. He’s got fantastic veteran teammates to help guide him in making that change, and I’ll be surprised if Bieber doesn’t make the change to using his slider more often this season – at the very least I’m confident we’ll see fewer fastballs. There is almost no risk to drafting Bieber at his current ADP, as he’d return value even if he makes no changes at all. If he does adjust, you could have one of the very best value starting pitchers on your roster. Draft him with confidence.
