T-Mobile Park has been both kind and cruel to Shane Bieber.
On one hand, the 2020 Cy Young winner owns a career 1.50 ERA and 33 strikeouts in five starts at the home of the Seattle Mariners. But on the other, it is the mound he walked off for the last time before undergoing Tommy John surgery in 2024.
So, as Bieber returned to Seattle for Game 3 of the American League Championship Series, now a member of the Toronto Blue Jays, the 30-year-old took a moment pre-game to acknowledge the journey he has taken over the past year to return to the post-season.
"Just warming up before the game tonight, recognizing that the last time I warmed up here, I knew something was wrong with my elbow, and I felt entirely different tonight," he told reporters post-game.
"It was kind of a nice little full-circle moment."
In that early April 2024 start, Bieber was in the midst of what appeared to be a return to all-star form with the Cleveland Guardians.
He had taken a step back in 2023, but after an off-season spent chasing improvements at Driveline Baseball — a data-driven training hub in Arizona— the early returns were dramatic. In his first two starts of 2024, Bieber didn't allow a run and struck out 20 batters in 12 innings with just one walk.
But something didn't feel right for that second start in Seattle, and after meeting with Drs. Keith Meister and Neal ElAttrache, Bieber was bound for Tommy John.
After more than a year of rehab, a mid-season trade to Toronto and eight starts in his return to an MLB mound, Bieber found himself taking the ball for a Blue Jays team desperately in need of a win to avoid going down 3-0 in this ALCS. And, of course, it was all back at T-Mobile Park.
The outing got off to a rocky start when Julio Rodríguez lifted a 1-1 fastball 414 feet in the left-field bleachers, giving Seattle a 2-0 lead and sending the home crowd into a frenzy.
But Bieber settled in and stopped the bleeding from there.
Only three more Mariners recorded hits against the right-hander, as Bieber worked his way through six innings on 88 pitches, striking out eight and not permitting another run.
His outing, combined with Toronto's offensive explosion, was exactly what the club needed to come away with a 13-4 win.
The eight punchouts were the most Bieber had recorded in a game since his Blue Jays debut in late August. He got there by masterfully spotting his slider low-and-away, generating seven of his 17 swinging strikes with the offering. He mixed in four other pitches on the night, keeping Seattle's lineup off balance with a variety of fastballs, changeups and breaking pitches.
"They're a really good lineup. 1 through 9 can damage you at any point. I think I saw that in the first inning," Bieber said. "So swing-and-miss is a big part of my game when I'm going right, and there was an opportunity to kind of attack that tonight and thankfully, after that first inning, I was able to find it."
Bieber may very well be called upon to step up in another big spot in this series for the Blue Jays if they hope to advance to the World Series.
Now that his Game 3 start has come and gone, the Blue Jays' big deadline splash is in line to pitch a potential Game 7 scenario in Toronto, should the series extend that far.
"That's what they brought me here to do, and I remember this time last year having not thrown a ball for a while, just thinking I can't wait to pitch in big games," he said. "So I find myself here in the ALCS and was able to do that tonight. So happy with how things are playing out, but we're still down 2-1 and there's a lot left to do."
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