Blue Jays Offer Cy Young Winner a Shange of Scenery

I know I was worried about a slow trade deadline; “top 100 prospects never get traded at the deadline anymore” had become a fashionable cliché. Even before the Padres dropped a depth charge on that notion on Thursday morning, the Blue Jays traded Khal Stephen, the no. 80 prospect in baseball, for a guy who hasn’t thrown a pitch in the majors all season, and has only made four starts in the past two calendar years.

It’s Shane Bieber, so it makes sense, but still.

This might come across as a little naïve, but Bieber has been such a definitive player for the Guardians, it’s going to be weird to see him in another uniform. Maybe not for long; we got used to Justin Verlander on the Astros pretty quickly. But Bieber stepped seamlessly into the post-2016 void and seemed to single-handedly drag Cleveland into contention year after year.

Bieber blew out his elbow and underwent Tommy John surgery in April 2024, which complicated matters for the 2020 Cy Young winner in his walk year. Come free agency, he stayed put on a one-year deal worth $10 million, with a $16 million player option for 2026.

Given the timing of Bieber’s surgery, this year — or at least most of this year — was supposed to be a write-off. Had things gone more smoothly in Cleveland, the Guardians would have held on to Bieber and considered him a major midseason pickup. I mean, we just learned that adding a pitcher like Bieber at the deadline is worth a top 100 prospect, didn’t we?

While Bieber has been idle for so long, I wouldn’t worry too much about the elbow in the immediate future. Tommy John surgery has a lengthy recovery period, but it’s a fairly simple procedure with little of the unpredictability of core or shoulder injuries. More to the point, Bieber has already made four minor league rehab starts. In his most recent, on Tuesday for Double-A Akron, he threw 57 pitches over four innings, striking out seven while allowing three hits, no walks, and a single run on a solo home run.

The Guardians’ plan was for Bieber to make at least one more rehab start, and Bieber will need further gradual introduction before he’s comfortable throwing 100 pitches in a high-pressure game, but all that is a matter of when, not if.

While I’m not concerned about the injury from Toronto’s perspective, I do want to flag two things about Bieber that would give me pause.

The first is that even if Bieber returns to his 2023 form quickly, 2023 Bieber was not 2020 Bieber. Even before his elbow gave out, Bieber’s average fastball velocity had dropped to the 91 mph range from 94 in his Cy Young season:

If you suspected that a loss of velocity might have an impact on Bieber’s overall performance, you’d be correct. He was still a 4.8 WAR pitcher in 2022 with an average fastball velocity of 91.5, thanks to his high volume of work, impeccable command, and multiple knockout breaking pitches. But the guy who put up closer numbers on a starter’s workload in 2020 hasn’t been there for a while:

With two years of rest and contemplation, who knows what Bieber’s repertoire will look like when he comes back. But this might be more of a Max Scherzer situation for the Blue Jays than they would hope.

The other issue is Bieber’s contract, and its player option for 2026. If Bieber returns quickly and shoves for Toronto, especially in the playoffs, he’s going to decline the option and hit free agency. The price for pitching being what it is, a healthy and effective Bieber would be able to command much more than $16 million over one year on the open market. To name another ex-Guardians pitcher: Matthew Boyd made just eight regular season starts before the Cubs gave him two years and $29 million this past offseason. And Boyd was three years older than Bieber is now, with nothing like his track record.

That would make Bieber a rental, and Stephen is a high price to pay for that.

If Bieber stinks, or gets hurt again, he’ll undoubtedly activate the option for 2026. By trading for Bieber and Seranthony Domínguez, Toronto has also gone over the third luxury tax threshold for this year. And Bieber’s option brings Toronto’s total tax liability for 2026 to within a rounding error of $200 million. That’s before they replace Scherzer, Chris Bassitt, and Bo Bichette, all of whom are free agents at year’s end.

Not that Toronto’s faceless corporate conglomerate owners should be sweating pennies, or whatever coins they use up there, but it’s worth noting.

What, then, did Toronto give up to get Bieber?

They are selling high on Stephen. Few prospects, if any, have done more to advance their reputation in the past few months than this 2024 second-round pick out of Mississippi State. At the start of the season, Eric Longenhagen had him ranked 17th in Toronto’s system with a 40 FV grade. Four months later, Stephen is a 50 FV and the 80th-ranked prospect in the sport.

In the intervening months — just 17 starts and one relief appearance — Stephen blitzed through both levels of A-ball and recently made his debut at Double-A. The simple fact that he’s moving that quickly is a good sign for a pitcher who was 22 before he threw his first professional pitch.

There’s nothing particularly explosive about Stephen’s game. There’s no triple-digit velocity, no unprecedented sinker action, no hailstone of a curveball. But he’s athletic, he’s got very good command, he never walks anyone, and he can locate all three of his pitches — a four-seamer, slider, and changeup. That’s really all you need to succeed as a third or fourth starter in the majors.

The next step for Stephen, the jump to Double-A, is a weed-out phase. The Guardians will bash him against high-minors competition until they know what they’ve got, and go from there. It’s possible that the Blue Jays traded Stephen at the absolute perfect time. Or, the Guardians might be able to coax another level from a polished college pitching prospect. After all, that’s what they did to Bieber.

So while it’s literally true that this is a top 100 prospect being traded for a former Cy Young winner straight up, there’s a fair bit of uncertainty in both directions. If I had to draw a conclusion now, I’d say that Cleveland did well to get a prospect like Stephen out of this deal. The Jays, on the other hand, can stomach the risk of Stephen making them look foolish in three years.

This is a trade for now, for a team that’s chasing its first division title in almost 10 years and has suffered numerous frustrating false starts in the meantime. They can afford to pay a little extra.