Guardians ace Shane Bieber will soon be undergoing a Tommy John surgery after experiencing elbow pain in each of his last two starts, the team announced. Bieber will miss the rest of the 2024 season and roughly half of the 2025 season, as per the usual recovery timeline for TJ procedures.

The devastating news comes on the heels of an injury-shortened 2023 campaign for the right-hander, as Bieber was limited to 128 innings while missing about two and a half months due to elbow inflammation. He returned from the 60-day injured list to make two starts in late September, which seemingly indicated that the problem was behind him, and that Bieber could now look forward to a more normal offseason and ramp-up routine. However, as the Guardians’ statement indicates, Bieber had some discomfort in his elbow following his first start this year, and the problem continued through his next outing.

Certainly nothing appeared to be amiss in terms of results, given that Bieber looked completely dominant in tossing 12 shutout innings and recording 20 strikeouts (against just one walk and 10 hits allowed) over his two starts. This will now unfortunately mark the last we’ll see of Bieber on a big league mound for the next 13-15 months, and we might have already seen his final outing in a Cleveland uniform since he is a free agent this winter.