Do the Blue Jays already have the best rotation in baseball as Bieber opts in?

It felt like a fever dream when the move was first announced; Shane Bieber is joining the Toronto Blue Jays. That headline punctuated a trade deadline where the Blue Jays bolstered their team with some very under the radar moves, maybe none more than picking up a former Cy Young award winner who was, at the time, still recovering from Tommy John surgery.

The caveat was always that the Blue Jays were probably only getting a few starts from Bieber - at best a couple of those would be in the playoffs, and then he would opt out of his contract and test free agency.

But that's not what happened, instead Bieber pitched brilliantly for the Blue Jays in both the regular season and the playoffs and decided to stick around for one more year, possibly giving the Blue Jays the best rotation in the game.

Do the Blue Jays already have the best rotation in baseball as Bieber opts in?

A full season of a healthy Bieber will already give the Blue Jays a head start on the rotation they started with in 2025. Going into the year they had Kevin Gausman headlining a rotation that also included José Berrios, Chris Bassitt, Bowden Francis and Max Scherzer. Only Scherzer finished the year in the same role as he started with, as Berrios and Francis were both on the injured by the end of the season and Bassitt pitched out of the bullpen (very admirably we might add) in the postseason.

Bieber is already being projected by FanGraphs to give the Blue Jays 172 innings while pitching to a 2.8 fWAR. They project he'll end up with 157 strikeouts, a 3.87 ERA, a 21.7% strikeout rate and 3.77 FIP. Which are all very good numbers for a guy that will be slotted into the number two or three spot in your staff.

They guys who will join him are Gausman and Trey Yesavage. The veteran Gausman will be coming off an excellent 2025 campaign in which he finished with a 4.1 fWAR and 3.59 ERA in 193 innings pitched. While the rookie Yesavage will be entering his first full season in the majors, looking to build off an incredible finish to a year which he started in Single-A.

Yesavage had a 10.49 K/9 rate and 3.21 ERA in the three regular season starts, then continued his dominance with five postseason starts where he racked up a 12.69 K/9 rate and opponents hit just .188 against him.

Gausman will be 35-years-old on opening day next season and it will be his 14th year in the majors. You wonder if father time will catch up to him at some point, but for now he's projected to have another good year with FanGraphs giving him a 2.9 fWAR with a .245 batting average against, and 1.25 WHIP, while they see some of his other numbers trending in the wrong direction, with his FIP rising to 3.95 and his home run rate increasing to 1.25.

Yesavage is projected to get 146 innings under his belt in 2026 with a 3.86 ERA and 159 strikeouts. FanGraphs sees Yesavage being a tough guy for opponents to square up, giving him a .231 batting average against and .264 BABIP. What will be interesting to watch is how do guys adjust to seeing him a second or third time throughout the season and will they have more or less success with those extra looks.

The Blue Jays could also have a healthy José Berrios factor into their rotation plans as well. Berrios had a stretch in 2025 where he was one of the best pitchers in the league. From May 1 through July 27, Berrios threw 68 innings, tallied 61 strikeouts and allowed 22 earned runs for a 2.78 ERA. Unfortunately it seems like fatigue and a nagging injury finally got the best of a guy who had never missed a start since making his MLB debut 10 years ago, in 2016.

These four pitchers, if healthy, should give the Blue Jays a real shot at replicating much of the success they had in 2025. Is it the best in baseball? The Dodgers with Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow and Shohei Ohtani have an argument to make, as do the Phillies who still currently employ Christopher Sánchez, Jesús Luzardo, Aaron Nola and Zack Wheeler. When all four of those guys are healthy they are a dangerous pitching staff.

In the American League, the Mariners can boast having Bryan Woo, Logan Gilbert, Logan Webb and Luis Castillo as their top four, while the Yankees are expecting to get Gerrit Cole back at some point to join Max Fried, Carlos Rodón and Cam Schlittler.

To make the argument as to who has the best rotation is going to be subjective but objectively the Blue Jays have a stake in the game thanks to the very early offseason work of getting Bieber to stick around for at least one more year.