GOODYEAR, Ariz. -- By the end of the 2025 season, Tanner Bibee was positioned exactly where you would have hoped he would have been back in Spring Training: starting a must-win game for the Guardians in the postseason.
The road to that point, however, was bumpy.
“Super up and down,” Bibee said of his 2025 season. “I feel like I dealt with a ton of adversity, probably the most adversity I've dealt with since college. … I feel like all the factors that I don't have control over, and even the factors I do have control over, I feel like I didn't do a very good job of handling it.”
Bibee (who made his second start of Cactus League play in Saturday’s 7-5 loss to the White Sox at Goodyear Ballpark) signed a five-year extension with the Guardians last March, a well-earned deal for the right-hander who has solidified himself as an anchor in Cleveland’s rotation. The same month, he was named Cleveland's Opening Day starter, but was ultimately scratched from the outing due to food poisoning.
Bibee went on to make 31 starts for the second straight season and toss 182 1/3 innings, a personal best. But he logged a 4.24 ERA and a 1.23 WHIP, and surrendered 27 homers. Each of those were career highs and up from 2024 (3.47 ERA, 1.12 WHIP, 22 homers).
As part of his up-and-down year, Bibee acknowledged he may have put some extra pressure on himself to perform early on, after signing his extension.
“Probably,” he said. “I feel like no matter what people say to you, like, ‘It doesn't change anything. It doesn't change anything.’ I did sign a contract, and maybe I put the pressure on myself to want to pitch better than I already was, instead of just being who I was. I could have been doing that pretty early, for sure.
“I sat and reflected a lot about this last year this offseason. This year definitely feels like way more of a clean slate. It feels like there's a lot less stress to it. I'm excited to go out there.”
Bibee noted 2025 felt like a year where anything that could go wrong, went wrong. He made multiple mechanical adjustments and was searching for which pitches were working, whether through their profile or his command of them. His underlying numbers pointed to some bad luck, such as an expected ERA (3.64) that was much lower than his actual. He also held opponents to a 36.6 percent hard-hit rate, which ranked in the 80th percentile.
Bibee struck out batters at a lower rate in 2025 (21.3 percent) than ‘24 (26.3), and his walk rate was higher in '25 (7.1 percent) than '24 (6.2 percent). Opponents also hit .301 with a .497 slugging percentage against his four-seam fastball (his primary offering), and he had a career-low 13.2 whiff rate with it. Bibee noted working on his heater was the "motif" of his offseason.
Last year was not up to Bibee's standard, but he was able to take some solace in his finish.
• Bibee logged a 3.96 ERA in 61 1/3 innings in 10 starts from August through the end of the regular season.
• Over four starts in September, Bibee logged a 1.30 ERA with 26 strikeouts and five walks in 27 2/3 innings. That included his first career shutout on Sept. 12 against the White Sox.
• In Cleveland’s 6-1 win over the Tigers in Game 2 of the AL Wild Card Series, Bibee allowed one run on five hits and three walks with six strikeouts.
Bibee noted he was not necessarily where he wanted to be movement-wise on the mound in September. But finishing the season the way he did after all he went through allowed him to enter the winter with confidence.
"If I don't have that September, in my opinion, I’m probably not on the playoff roster,” Bibee said. “I feel like I'm going into the offseason probably pretty pissed off. … Having that September and going into an offseason pitching how I thought I should be pitching was a good end to a bad year.”
The Guardians are counting on Bibee to be an anchor atop their rotation this season. Bibee and Gavin Williams figure to take the ball first, in some order, during Cleveland's season-opening series in Seattle.
Whenever Bibee gets the ball, he will look to pick up where he left off last fall.
“If you look at the last couple months [of 2025] for Tanner," manager Stephen Vogt said, “that was Tanner Bibee."