During a game broadcast earlier this week, Tom Hamilton said something that was both obvious but also striking about how the Guardians season has played out. I am paraphrasing, but it was something like this:
“If you had told someone before the season that Shane Bieber would miss the entire year due to Tommy John surgery, Gavin Williams would miss half the season with an injured elbow and both Triston McKenzie and Logan Allen would be sent down to the minors due to being ineffective, I think the automatic assumption would be that the Guardians must be sellers.”
And yeah, I think if you would have told any of us that back in the middle of March, we’d be expecting a season of disappointment. I remember how I felt after the news broke about Bieber, specifically, in the first weeks of the season. You can go find it. It is immortalized on this website. Doom and gloom. I think I referenced Simon and Garfunkel at one point.
But as we know to the contrary, this has been far from a season of darkness, doom and gloom or disappointment. We near the end of July, and the Guardians still find themselves with the best record in the American League, on pace to win 98 games and 4.5 games ahead of the Minnesota Twins in the AL Central Division. A team whose recent reputation has been staked on its stellar starting pitching, this season has been successful in spite of that same unit. Coming into Saturday’s play, Guardians starters rank somewhere between 23rd and 25th in ERA, WHIP and BB per nine. They’re the worst in baseball in terms of homers per nine.
Even with the offense slowing some in recent weeks, injury and ineffectiveness suggest the best way to solidify the Guardians as one of the best teams in baseball as the post-season approaches would be to add starting pitching to the roster. The most obvious way to do this would be to add via the trade market, with Major League Baseball’s trade deadline looming on Wednesday. Moves have just started to pick up in recent days, but Cleveland has not yet acted.
Signals have been mixed. On one hand, Zack Meisel of the Athletic reported a few weeks ago that he expects the Guardians to be aggressive. On the other, team president Chris Antonetti was recently quoted saying that regardless of whatever moves are made, the team is in the position they are in because of the players already on the roster and most of their future success will be dictated by those players. Honestly, it sounds like he is covering himself because the trade market is tough.
And this much is true. An expanded playoff system leaves fewer teams willing to sell talent. Starting pitching talent is one of the most precious commodities in the sport as it is. Creative decisions are more required than ever to improve rosters. Two contenders, the Orioles and Phillies, made a trade on Friday- this is an example of what I mean.
For their part, Cleveland has been creative in a different way. They tried to bring in Spencer Howard off of waivers to help stem the tide in the rotation. Two bad outings later he was no longer on the roster. They have also signed Matthew Boyd, who is rehabbing from Tommy John surgery in Akron and stands to be ready to contribute to the starting rotation at some point in August. He’s pitched well against AA hitters, but it is yet to be seen how the veteran lefty with a career 4.94 ERA will fare when he returns to facing MLB talent.
Moves like Howard and Boyd suggest that Cleveland is willing to make signings and go out on a limb to try options that are not currently on rosters in the majors. This willingness leads some fans to a question that lingers like a brash, right-handed, science-loving, unfiltered elephant in the room.
Many fans question, given the Guardians’ lack of starting rotation depth and willingness to be creative, why the team would not try to sign Trevor Bauer.
For his part, Bauer is a former All-Star and former Cy Young Award winner who spent seven of his ten MLB seasons in Cleveland. He was a contributing member of some of the team’s best-starting rotations at a time when they built the reputation that I was referring to earlier.
Overall, Bauer was an accomplished major league pitcher. That Cy Young Award was won in the shortened 2020 season as a Cincinnati Red. He very well could have also won the award in 2018 as an Indian but suffered a stress fracture in his leg in August and missed most of the rest of the regular season. In his final 28 starts as a Major Leaguer in 2020 and 2021, Bauer pitched to an outstanding 2.24 ERA.
Possessing a rubber arm, due to a training regimen focused on long-tossing, Bauer had a reputation in his MLB career of being able to take the baseball whenever needed- offering to pitch in extra-inning games on his non-scheduled start days, for instance. That type of innings eating is exactly what Cleveland could use to go along with a track record of effectiveness on the mound.
There is also perhaps a sense of familiarity between Cleveland and Bauer. While now former manager Terry Francona was the skipper of the Indians during Bauer’s time with the team, the same people remain at the helm of the front office in Antonetti and General Manager Mike Chernoff. Carl Willis remains the team’s pitching coach, as he had been for Bauer’s entire time in Cleveland. Bauer is considered one of the most analytically-minded players in the sport and has held that characteristic for his entire career. This is a mindset that matches the Guardians’ organization well and part of what made Bauer’s time with the team work so well the first time.
At face value, there seems to be a lot that would be right about a reunion between Cleveland and Bauer. The Guardians are a team with a significant need to add starting pitching. Bauer is a former MLB starter with a track record of success, including previous time in Cleveland. He holds specific characteristics as a pitcher that the team both needs and seeks.
With Bauer currently playing in the Mexican League, given the familiarity among both parties and Bauer’s established talents, I would go as far as to say some would view such a reunion as a no-brainer.
However, to leave the discussion simply at this point feels like a grave oversimplification of the facts. While Bauer was indeed all of the things that I have mentioned above, that is not the entirety of his story. Far from it.
Let’s start on the field. A self-proclaimed scientist, Bauer himself would tell you that pitchers cannot change their maximum spin rate on pitches. Spin rates work like fingerprints. They are individually characteristic to the pitcher in the way that we as people all have distinctive fingerprints that cannot be altered. The only way to consistently change one’s spin rate is to use illegal substances. Yet somehow, Bauer’s spin rate on fastballs and breaking pitches would spike and increase by about 300-400 RPM in 2020, creating a better life and break on his pitches just in time for both his Cy Young Award-winning year and subsequent contract negotiations. This occurrence would also predate MLB’s crackdown on foreign substance use. That crackdown remains ongoing.
Off the field, personality issues have been a problem for Bauer for the entirety of his career. Cleveland was able to acquire Bauer in the winter after the 2012 season despite the fact that Bauer had catapulted himself through the minors. Despite the fact, he had been the 3rd overall pick in the draft just 18 months earlier. Despite the fact that he had been ranked the 9th best prospect in all of baseball by both Baseball America and MLB.com. The Arizona Diamondbacks had grown tired of him in just those 18 months. Some of this is because Arizona wasn’t a good fit, but some of it was Bauer’s doing as a stubborn, brash and entitled personality. So, Arizona sent him away.
Most of us know the highlights of the issues Bauer had while in Cleveland: the drone incident that kept him from pitching effectively in the 2016 American League Championship Series (think about how more ubiquitous drones are today than they were just eight years ago, by the way). Saying vulgar things to Houston Astros fans on Twitter. Having a temper tantrum over having a bad inning and flinging a game ball 300 feet over the center-field fence at Kauffman Stadium because Francona was going to take him out of the game- what would ultimately be his last game as an Indian.
Admittedly, Bauer’s time in Cleveland was fruitful. If just any one or two of these incidents had happened in a vacuum and nothing else, we could chalk him up as being an eccentric individual who was talented and just didn’t know how to read a room but was mostly harmless. That sentiment changed during the 2021 season.
Before we go further, let me be clear on something. I am not here to make statements of guilt or innocence. I am not here to fight a culture war. I am here to answer a question about whether the Guardians should be interested in bringing this specific individual into their clubhouse and having him pitch in baseball games for them.
That being said, in 2021, a woman came forward accusing Bauer of sexual assault. Since then, three additional women have come forward telling their stories and accusing Bauer of the same. The details of the accusations are heinous. They are actions that no human being should endure.
MLB launched an investigation. No criminal charges were ever filed by any of the women. Civil charges were settled without any money being exchanged. Ultimately, Bauer was suspended for two full seasons before appealing and getting his suspension cut to 194 games. Upon reinstatement, the Los Angeles Dodgers, who Bauer had signed a three-year, $102 million contract with before the 2021 season severed ties with him. They chose to pay out the entirety of the contract rather than return Bauer to the team.
Upon reinstatement in 2023, looking to show he could still pitch, Bauer signed on to pitch in Japan for the 2023 season. He is currently pitching in the Mexican League this year. He has not stood on a Major League mound since being put on leave during the 2021 season. That’s why Bauer is available now. That is why this question of bringing him back to the Guardians is even possible.
Again, I am not here to play judge or jury. My opinion on whether Trevor Bauer did or did not do the foul things he was accused of is irrelevant, but to not look at the context of how Bauer is available when giving consideration to signing him would be grossly irresponsible.
And quite frankly, what I am certain of, regardless of anything criminal that Bauer did or didn’t do is that he has a personality and temperament prone to making poor life decisions. The common thread between something as trivial as alienating himself from the Diamondbacks, something a little more serious like potentially putting Oscar Mercado in danger by whirling around blindly firing a baseball and something incredibly serious like the allegations levied against him was that at some point in each instance Bauer made a decision under his own power that put him in a bad spot- right or wrong.
The Guardians are a team that believes chemistry matters. A team whose ownership is often blamed for being cheap, they made Francona the highest-paid manager in all of baseball. They didn’t do this because Francona was a supreme tactician (though he was a fine one, his shining moment being his bullpen management in the 2016 playoffs) but because he knew how to manage personalities and create harmony in the clubhouse. They went back to the same well when they hired Stephen Vogt this off-season, his best trait thus far being that he is an incredibly well-liked people person- though he is still a rookie manager.
This philosophy has helped the Guardians find success. Francona holds the club record for wins as a manager and the team made the playoffs in six of his eleven seasons. As stated earlier, Vogt has them as the best team in the American League. Chemistry won’t make a bad team good, but it can make a pretty good team great.
Additionally, Bauer hasn’t attempted to get a Major League hitter out in more than three years. He pitched well in Japan last year, but by no means dominated. 20 pitchers pitched 100 or more innings in Nippon Professional Baseball and had a better ERA than he did, but no one is asking if the Guardians should sign James Marvel or Jeremy Beasley. He’s been great this season in the Mexican League, but the level of competition he faces continues to degrade.
The fact of the matter is that in bringing in Trevor Bauer, the Guardians would potentially be looking at adding an individual that goes against what has been a successful organizational strategy. They would be adding a 33-year-old pitcher who hasn’t faced a Major Leaguer in three years in the middle of a playoff race, hoping he still has the talent to succeed in spite of not being able to use any of the aids he allegedly had at his disposal when he last pitched in the bigs. They would do this knowing he has never been remorseful enough to acknowledge his missteps in order to change his behavior. They would do it knowing he would likely make another poor decision (big or small) again, causing distraction and potentially turmoil for a rookie manager in the depths of a playoff race.
All in the name of hopefully being better than Xzavion Curry or Matthew Boyd or a resurgent Triston McKenzie/Logan Allen? Hopefully? Seems like a pretty big gamble.
Yeah, that’s a big “no, thank you” from me.
The post Answering the Trevor Bauer Question appeared first on Cleveland Sports Talk.