Shane Bieber And The Fragile Nature Of Pitching

I'm going to be honest: When I saw the Zack Meisel tweet, my heart hit the floor, probably causing a crater in my living room. This wasn't the news we were expecting on a Saturday morning, as the Guardians were riding a three-game winning streak and had won six of their last eight games. We all just saw Shane Bieber twirl two masterful starts where he struck out 20 batters (which led the league) in 12 innings of work; this was supposed to be recapturing of an ace that became a fleeting presence on the mound, that would help lead the next generation of arms fresh off the conveyor belt of the pitching factory, but now he's gone.Since 2023, 37% of pitchers have had Tommy John surgery, and Bieber is now among those who have gone under the knife. This topic has grown harder to ignore as some of the game's greats are falling to the wayside, some blame the pitch clock, and some blame the max effort velo-obsessed culture around pitching in the last decade. Bieber's case was trying to get past lingering issues that started in 2021, with a shoulder injury that sidelined him of the second half. It not only robbed him of that season but two ticks off his fastball; in 2022, he could remedy it with pitch usage, using cutters and sliders that would get batters off the scent of his diminished fastball. He was a catalyst of Cleveland's run to the ALDS, seeming to prove that he could still be an ace despite lacking the velocity that his contemporaries strive for in the modern game. 2023 was a different story; his elbow started to bother him, the breaking balls didn't have the same bite, and the fastball was getting crushed with his hard-hit jumping from 55.3% in 2022 to 62%; the regression that many worried about hit him like a Mac truck. With his impending free agency looming and future earnings on the line, Bieber went to Driveline, the world-renowned pitching lab, to not only help refine his mechanics but also rediscover some lost velocity. The early results were positive, with him living at around 92 mph compared to 90.1 in 2023. The rest of his arsenal was playing up, and the return of his 2022 form seemed to back...if only his elbow were willing to cooperate.You can blame whoever you want in this situation. You can blame the front office for not selling Bieber off for 10 cents on the dollar, or the system that encourages the behavior of needing velocity over control. You can cope in whatever way you want, but the truth of the matter is that pitching is finite. Pitching is unnatural to the human body; some are blessed with rubber arms, and some cannot escape its pitfalls. The tragedy of Shane Bieber isn't the loss of closure for his final moments in a Guardians uniform that we have as fans, but the reminder that in a sport that starts and ends on the mound, only a few truly make the most of their opportunities pitching in this game.