The Guardians have signed Tanner Bibee to a five-year contract extension that includes a club option for the 2030 season, according to MLB.com’s Tim Stebbins. The Athletic’s Zack Meisel (multiple links) reports that Bibee will receive at least $48MM in guaranteed money. As per Meisel, the contract breaks down as a $2MM signing bonus and a $3MM salary this season, $4MM in 2026, $7MM in 2027, $10MM in 2028, $21MM in 2029, and then Cleveland holds a $21MM club option for 2030 with a $1MM buyout.
Bibee just turned 26 earlier this month, so he gets a late birthday present in the form of a life-changing contract. Bibee has exactly two years of MLB service time, and his $48MM deal ranks as the third-most money ever given to a pitcher with between two years and two years and 171 days of service time. The 2025 season was Bibee’s final pre-arbitration year, so the extension covers all three of his arb-eligible years and at least one of his free agent years.
A fifth-round pick out of Cal State Fullerton in the 2021 draft, Bibee quickly became the latest quality arm to emerge from Cleveland’s pitching development factory. Bibee attracted top-100 prospect attention entering the 2023 season, and he immediately delivered on that potential by posting a 2.98 ERA in 142 innings with the Guardians. That performance earned him a second-place finish in AL Rookie of the Year voting, and subsequently a full year of service time, as per the rules of the league’s Prospect Promotion Incentive plan.
There was no sophomore slump in the follow-up, as Bibee had a 3.47 ERA in 173 2/3 frames last season, with improved strikeout and walk rates from his rookie year. Bibee also got his first turn on the postseason stage, with a 3.45 ERA in 15 2/3 innings during the Guards’ run to the ALCS. Perhaps the only minor red flag was that Bibee (an average velocity pitcher) saw his fastball drop off rather drastically in effectiveness from 2023 to 2024, but that was balanced out by his cutter becoming an even more effective pitch.
Bibee becomes the latest in a decades-long line of quality players the Cleveland organization has signed to early-career extensions. Identifying and locking up talent has been perhaps the key plank of the team’s success over the years, given how the smaller-market Guardians rarely sign their players to secondary contracts or big free agent deals. Jose Ramirez is a rare example of a Guardians player who did ink a second extension to remain in the Cleve, and Ramirez and Bibee are now the only Guards players signed to guaranteed money beyond the 2026 season. The Guardians do have some control over Emmanuel Clase and Trevor Stephan in the form of club options covering their 2027 and 2028 seasons, as per the terms of their own extensions.
If Ramirez is the cornerstone of the position-player mix, Bibee now has a similar status as the key figure of the Guardians’ rotation for the remainder of the decade. Bibee already stepped up as a pillar of stability in what was an uncharacteristically so-so year for the Cleveland rotation as a whole, and he’ll look to again be the ace of a staff that includes Ben Lively, Logan Allen, Gavin Williams, and new arrival Luis Ortiz. Longtime ace Shane Bieber re-signed with the Guards in December and is expected to return around midseason once he fully recovers from Tommy John surgery.
Photo courtesy of Ken Blaze, Imagn Images