GOODYEAR, Arizona, Feb. 28, 2025 — When the Cleveland Guardians take the field on Opening Day on March 27, it will be the first time since 2018 that somebody other than Shane Bieber will be taking the ball. That honor will likely fall to Tanner Bibee, who moves to the front of the rotation in just his third big league season.
“I love Tanner’s confidence and demeanor on the mound,” said Guardians manager Stephen Vogt, who made it clear that an official Opening Day starter had not yet been named. “He proved to be one of the best starters in the league last year. He stabilized our rotation and gave us a chance to win every time out.”
The 26-year-old was the engine for the Guardians’ staff in 2024, pitching to a 3.47 ERA, 1.12 WHIP, and 187/40 K/BB ratio in 173.2 innings. With all of the injuries that befell the rotation last year, Bibee was the only starter on the team who threw enough innings to qualify for MLB leaderboards and was one of only two starters, along with Ben Lively, to pitch more than 104 MLB innings. While the team spent plenty of resources building out the depth of the rotation, Bibee himself is working to take another step in establishing himself atop the rotation.
A big part of that process is adding a sinker into his arsenal. It’s a pitch Bibee was working on towards the end of last season, even working it into his arsenal for the final two starts of the year. In those two starts, the pitch was 94.1 mph, essentially the same velocity as his four-seamer, with 14.2 inches of horizontal movement. That velocity and movement profile should allow Bibee to mix-and-match fastballs to keep hitters off of his four-seamer.
“A lot of hitters only sit two pitches,” he explained this week at spring training. “I feel like [righties] usually sit fastball and spin off of me because I throw a lot of spin. This, I think, is a way of preventing them from leaning over the plate. As soon as I see them leaning over the plate, I can throw the sinker middle, and it will blow their hands up.”
That approach will also help Bibee to limit some of the hard contact he allows to righties off of his four-seamer. The pitch had an above-average swinging strike rate (SwStr%) against righties, with just a .228 batting average against and 6.6% barrel rate, but it did allow a 43% Ideal Contact Rate (ICR), which takes into account the hard groundballs that don’t get counted into barrel rate. That 43% mark is slightly below the 42% league average mark, so while Bibee doesn’t have a major issue with hard contact against his four-seamer, giving righties another fastball variation to worry about should diminish their effectiveness against his primary fastball, which is part of his intentions with the sinker.
“I think if you could throw two fastballs with different shapes, that’s kind of the new wave,” he said. “Luis [L. Ortiz] has two different fastballs. Colin Rea really got us last year with two different fastballs. I know George Kirby throws two now. Unless you throw like an absolute nasty four-seam, then you don’t need anything else, but I think with guys that could throw two, it’s definitely a good weapon.”
Another good weapon for Bibee was the cutter that he introduced last season. Or wait, did he introduce a new slider and keep his older, hard slider as well? The pitch classification systems couldn’t agree, but Bibee was kind enough to clarify.
“The cutter was actually my slider before,” he said. “Same grip, it was just moving different last year, and then my slider now was the pitch that I added, but I don’t like calling it a sweeper.”
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The new slider that Bibee introduced last year was essentially the same velocity as the version he threw in 2023 but had over two inches more horizontal movement and nearly three inches less vertical drop. The more horizontal plane on the pitch allowed him to feel confident throwing it in the zone a bit more and not having to bury it low. He saw increases in his zone rate and strike rate while also seeing an impressive 3% increase in SwStr% on the pitch against righties. The pitch also had significantly better ICR rates and HR/FB rates against righties, but that was only one of the primary reasons Bibee decided to add the pitch.
“The slider was something I added to help with big spin and lefties, and it was definitely working toward the end.”
In 2023, Bibee’s slider didn’t allow a lot of hard contact to righties, but he also didn’t miss many bats with it. The new slider with the bigger spin not only led to a 10% increase in zone rate against lefties and a 12% strike increase but also a nearly 6% increase in swinging strike rate. That took a lot of pressure off of Bibee’s changeup, which was his only secondary to record an above-average SwStr% against lefties in 2023 and is a big reason Bibee saw an increase in strikeout rate against lefties last year.
There is even more room for growth for Bibee against lefties since he allowed a .263//320/.460 slash line in 2024. That next step could come down to improved locations on his changeup, which he throws 22% of the time to lefties. Last year, he pounded the zone with the pitch and got an above-average SwStr%, but he also allowed a .255 batting average because the changeup was low in the zone just 40% of the time, which was 1st percentile in baseball among starting pitchers.
“Definitely [wanna keep it] lower; I’m not trying to go up with it,” admitted Bibee, who had a 28% hiLoc% (high location rate) on his changeup against lefties in 2024, well over the league average of 13.6%. “I feel like the only time I do get damage on that pitch, or not damage but hits, is when it ends up up-and-away to a lefty because they see it for a super long time. It’s usually like a cap shot into the outfield when it should have been a groundball. If I can keep that pitch on the ground, or for a swing and miss, that’s the goal. As soon as I started pushing up, they can kind of pop it up, get it up in the air.”
Bibee had more success keeping the changeup low in 2023 when his triple slash to lefties was .202/.273/.273; yet, his low location rates were below average even then. If Bibee continues pushing that mark closer to the league average, it should help round out his performance more and push him closer to fantasy ace territory.
That harder cutter, which had been Bibee’s older slider, also isn’t going anywhere either. That pitch carved up both righties and lefties in 2024 with a 16.7% SwStr% and 26% ICR to lefties and a 20.5% SwStr% and 36% ICR to righties. The combination of the two gives Bibee multiple plus secondaries to pair with his new double fastball variations.
Yet, Bibee still expects to see a bit of a new movement profile when he finally takes the mound for a spring training game, but what that profile will be is a surprise to even him.
“I’m just making tweaks mechanically,” he said after a bullpen session during the second week of spring camp. “My shoulder was banged up most of the year last year, so I’m trying to get through cleaner so it doesn’t necessarily hurt.. It’s gonna be interesting to see how the ball comes out of the hand, how it plays with the cutter and the slider.”
There had been no indication that Bibee was pitching through any pain or discomfort last year, so the acknowledgement is a bit of a surprise and makes his results even more impressive. The new mechanical tweaks should allow Bibee to not only pitch with better health this season but also potentially see more movement on his secondaries, which will be interesting to track as spring training rolls along.
As it stands now, the 26-year-old feels like one of the safer SP2 picks in fantasy baseball, but unlike some of the other veterans who get drafted around him, like Luis Castillo, Logan Webb, and Zac Gallen, it feels like Bibee is on the precipice of taking his production to another level. You might want to be along for the ride.
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