SEATTLE -- The Blue Jays waited for Shane Bieber to join their starting rotation this year, but they’re still waiting for him to return to his old form.
Bieber struggled in his third start of the season Saturday afternoon, giving up seven runs in four-plus innings in an 11-0 loss to the Mariners in T-Mobile Park.
“I’ve just got to learn from it, continue to do what I have to do to make adjustments, and be better,” Bieber said.
The veteran right-hander and former Cy Young Award winner was sidelined earlier this season because of right elbow inflammation and didn’t make it back to a Major League mound until June 23.
That night, he gave up four runs on nine hits in 3 2/3 innings vs. Houston. In his next outing, on June 28, he looked better, giving up two runs on five hits and four walks in 5 1/3 innings vs. Texas.
But Bieber was largely done in on Saturday by a second inning that saw the Mariners send all nine hitters to the plate. And it was all accomplished with two outs.
Bieber started off the frame by getting Josh Naylor to fly out to right field and striking out Luke Raley. But Cole Young doubled, Victor Robles singled him in to give Seattle a 1-0 lead and Bieber then allowed a Colt Emerson single and a J.P. Crawford walk.
That brought up Randy Arozarena, who swung and missed at Bieber’s first-pitch slider. Bieber tried another slider and Arozarena clobbered it 412 feet over the left-field wall with an exit velo of 105 mph for a grand slam that gave the Mariners a 5-0 lead.
“I think, looking back, I was trying to repeat that first pitch,” Bieber said. “But to be honest, both dugouts know what's coming right after that first pitch, and then Randy makes a good adjustment, and I leave it a little bit more over the plate than the first one, and that's what happens.”
Bieber improved immediately after that, getting through the third and fourth innings in order, but he walked Arozarena to lead off the fifth and the next hitter, Dominic Canzone, hit a two-run homer that chased him.
The Blue Jays are showing patience with Bieber, given his elbow woes this season, which came on the heels of him missing most of 2025 after Tommy John surgery the previous year.
“For a guy who needs to pitch, you just have to be pretty deliberate with your stuff and setting up certain pitches with other ones, knowing when to be in the zone, knowing when to be out of the zone, things like that,” Blue Jays manager John Schneider said.
“He needs to pitch, he knows that, and I think using all quadrants of the plate will help.”
The Mariners didn’t stop the onslaught after Bieber departed, either. Canzone singled in a run in the sixth that chased reliever Adam Macko and Cal Raleigh greeted Macko’s replacement, Tommy Nance, with a three-run homer that made it an 11-0 game.
At that point, Schneider handed the ball to outfielder Myles Straw for the eighth inning, and he pitched a 1-2-3 frame with an arsenal of pitches that ranged between 38 and 61 mph.
As it turned out Saturday, though, even if Bieber only gave up one run, it wouldn’t have been enough.
That had a lot to do with Seattle starter Logan Gilbert, who retired the first 14 Blue Jays he faced, gave up a bloop single to Yohendrick Piñango, then got the next eight hitters out before departing with one out in the eighth.
Blue Jays All-Star second baseman Ernie Clement, who like most of these Blue Jays is familiar with Gilbert after facing him in last year’s American League Championship Series, said it was the best he’s seen the Mariners right-hander.
Schneider found it difficult to disagree with that sentiment.
“I mean, he's good, right?” Schneider said. “We've seen him a bunch, he's seen us a bunch. The fastball was good, up to 99, and the slider … you know, he had good stuff. You could kind of tell from the get-go he was pretty good.
“So that was a good old-fashioned [butt]-kicking on the Fourth of July.”