Shane Bieber placed on 10-day injured list with shoulder strain

Cleveland’s already-thin pitching staff has taken a massive blow

Shane Bieber has been placed on the 10-day injured list with a shoulder strain, according to the team’s Twitter account. Replacing him on the 26-man roster will be reliever Kyle Nelson.

Specifically, the subscapularis is the fan-shaped muscle that forms your armpit and aids in internally rotating your arm. Obviously, when you’re a major-league pitcher forcing your arm to throw a ball over 90 mph consistently, this muscle gets some work in.

For Shane Bieber, he’s used this muscle (and every other muscle in his body) more than any pitcher in baseball. He leads the league with 90.2 innings pitched and he has thrown seven or more innings in five of his 14 starts.

This will be Bieber’s first trip to the injured list since his debut in 2018. Prior to this injury, he had a 3.28 ERA and 33.9% strikeout rate. His next scheduled start would have been on Friday against the Pirates.

According to manager Terry Francona, Bieber will not be throwing for at least two weeks, so you can expect him to be out even more than that as he will have to ramp up when he’s able to pitch again. The exact timetable won’t be known until the grade of the strain can be properly determined.

With Bieber’s injury, Cleveland now has a starting rotation of Aaron Civale, a glass jar filled with the screams of terrified children, and three thumbtacks glued to a toothbrush. If they have any hope of keeping things together before Bieber and Zach Plesac return from injuries, they’ll need rookies J.C. Mejía, Eli Morgan, and Sam Hentges to step up and continue to develop. Having Triston McKenzie return to form and find the strike zone following his disastrous start on Saturday wouldn’t hurt, either.