Trevor Bauer Rips Media For Daring to Cover Doctored Baseball Story
Trevor Bauer is really upset with the media again. On Thursday night the Los Angeles Dodgers ace lashed out on Twitter over baseball reporters daring to (gasp!) report things.
During his start against the Oakland A's on Wednesday, umpires removed several balls Bauer threw. The crew collected several of the balls, which reportedly had markings on them and were sticky. They were sent to MLB's league offices for further inspection.
Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic, and other reporters wrote stories about the incident and apparently that pissed Bauer right off. Here's what he said on Twitter:
balls from every other pitcher being taken out of play in literally every other game this season are? Also lol to @MLB who already has “sources” talking to gossip bloggers about a supposedly confidential process a week into the season ??? thumbs up y’all keep killin it! ??????
— Trevor Bauer (トレバー・バウアー) (@BauerOutage) April 9, 2021
This shows pretty obviously that Bauer isn't actually reading the articles about him. All that I've read have mentioned that balls from a lot of games will be examined this year to see if foreign substances are being used. In the past Bauer has been vocal about how certain players are clearly cheating and getting away with it, and directly threw shade at the Houston Astros in May of 2018.
He claimed Astros pitcher magically saw their spin rates increase in Houston:
If only there was just a really quick way to increase spin rate. Like what if you could trade for a player knowing that you could bump his spin rate a couple hundred rpm overnight...imagine the steals you could get on the trade market! If only that existed...
— Trevor Bauer (トレバー・バウアー) (@BauerOutage) May 1, 2018
The following section of Rosenthal's article about Bauer makes those comments really interesting in hindsight:
"In 2018, Bauer wondered aloud on Twitter about how pitchers might increase their spin rates, making vague reference to the Astros. He then seemed to underscore his point, as Sarris noted, by adding spin rate to his fastball for one inning later that season. In 2020, when Bauer won the National League Cy Young Award in a shortened 60-game season, his four-seam fastball had the highest spin rate of any in baseball, and spin rates on his secondary pitches spiked as well."
So his spin rates spiked in Cincinnati last year just before getting a big contract. Interesting.
Look, I'm sure tons of guys scuff balls, or use some kind of substance to get more grip on them. The only reason this is news is because Bauer has loudly called out other players before. Now he's whining because he's been accused of the same thing he accused others of.