As Bieber nears Jays debut, how will his addition impact rotation?

LOS ANGELES -- Shane Bieber is one step closer to making his Blue Jays debut.

The 30-year-old right-hander threw 78 pitches in his second rehab start with Triple-A Buffalo on Saturday, allowing two earned runs on four hits with a walk and six strikeouts over 5 2/3 innings.

“It looked good,” Blue Jays manager John Schneider said before their 9-1 loss to the Dodgers at Dodger Stadium on Saturday. “Between locations, stuff. Impressed with his changeup. He looked pretty good.”

Bieber did give up a home run in his outing, but Schneider noted that Bieber is at the point in his rehab where it’s not about the results on the mound, but rather what his pitches are doing and how he’s feeling during and after his outings. Everything Schneider has seen since the Blue Jays acquired Bieber from the Guardians at the Trade Deadline has been promising.

Schneider added that he thinks Bieber needs one more rehab start before joining the big league rotation, in which the goal would be to reach 85 pitches, but he’s planning to meet with Bieber before deciding on the next steps.

“He’s heading back to Toronto tonight,” Schneider said. “And then we’re gonna figure that out for sure when we get back into town tomorrow night or Monday. But probably one more.”

In his five rehab starts since starting his latest assignment while still with the Guardians on July 15, Bieber has posted a 2.75 ERA over 19 2/3 innings pitched with 28 strikeouts and 0.92 WHIP. The 2020 AL Cy Young Award winner hasn’t pitched in a Major League game since throwing six scoreless innings for the Guardians on April 2, 2024. He was placed on the IL with a right elbow injury four days later, and underwent Tommy John surgery four days after that.

Schneider hasn’t ruled out the possibility of going to a six-man rotation when Bieber does join the team, but said that’s still up in the air. The biggest issue with that would be that some pitchers would end up getting seven days between outings including off-days.

“You don’t want to have that long of a layoff,” he said. “So still working through it.”

If Schneider does decide to stick with a traditional five-man rotation, he’ll have a decision to make amongst current starters Kevin Gausman, Max Scherzer, José Berríos, Chris Bassitt and Eric Lauer.

Bassitt gave up three runs on six hits over 4 2/3 innings against the Dodgers on Saturday. While the end result wasn’t there, Bassitt was throwing some of the hardest stuff he has all season -- his cutter topped out at 92.9 mph and sat at 91, 2.7 mph higher than his season average of 88.3. His slider, which has sat at an average of 82.1 mph this season, was up almost four mph at 86.

He attributed that to the urgency that comes with this time of the year.

“It’s the time to go,” Bassitt said. “Not that we baby things, but me, Berríos, and Gaus have been pretty dang smart overall. Just how we’ve handled the workload, how we’ve handled bullpens, how I’ve handled day-to-day life. And now it’s time to go.”

Whatever the decision ends up being, Schneider added that he told all the current members of the rotation to “just go pitch.”

“They’re all doing their part,” he said. “There’s a lot of veteran guys, and Lauer definitely doing his part. We talked to them right after the deadline, and the message hasn’t changed. It’s, ‘Get ready to pitch when your turn comes, and we’ll figure [it] out.’

“A good problem, if it does come into play in another week and a half or something.”