What should be the Browns’ expectations? While We’re Waiting
September 5, 2017Isaiah Thomas to begin working out with Cavs staff on Tuesday
September 5, 2017Trevor Bauer is at it again.
The opening line here could mean so many different things to so many different people. There are few personalities as complex with the ability to reach across the full spectrum more than Bauer can and has over his career with the Cleveland Indians- and beyond. The latest episode of Trevor-being-Trevor involved Avisail Garcia being an idiot in the batter’s box for the Chicago White Sox. Bauer decided rather than to quietly dismiss Garcia’s antics, he would return volley.
Trevor Bauer: Telling Avisail Garcia to get Back in the Box…then Telling him to go sit down. 😳 pic.twitter.com/t3vTk5L2ui
— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) September 4, 2017
Garcia apparently had some words in addition to the body language as he left the batter’s box. Bauer noted Garcia is unhappy opposing pitchers have been giving him a steady diet of breaking pitches. Bauer directs him back into the box, then proceeds to strike him out with a curve ball. Still not quite done, Bauer shows him to where his dugout and accompanying bench are in relationship to his current location. Always the helpful lad.
Here are Bauer’s remarks on the incident from STO followed by the transcript (for those without video access) courtesy of The Athletic’s T.J. Zuppe.
Avisail Garcia didn't like the pitches @BauerOutage was throwing him & let Trevor know.
Bauer reminds Garcia the rules of the game 😳 pic.twitter.com/5LYuXgS04L
— Bally Sports Cleveland (@BallySportsCLE) September 4, 2017
https://twitter.com/TJZuppe/status/904827705476210691
The situation is similar to Jose Ramirez flipping a bat near the Minnesota Twins dugout after Paul Molitor had ordered the player in front of Ramirez intentionally walked before he hit a home run. There is a big difference between starting a situation and responding when provoked. There is part of me that appreciates the players such as Corey Kluber who do not allow anything to disturb their mental state when on the mound. Kluber would have struck out Garcia and never thought about him again. However, there is also something to be said about the player who pitches with emotion. Who can dig deep and use their emotion to find something extra. Sort of like when Garcia came back up again later in the game.
https://twitter.com/drivelinebases/status/904836060592537600
Each person uses God’s gifts to be the person who they truly are in order to succeed. If they are not genuine with themselves as a person, then they will struggle to perform to their abilities. Ramirez rarely smiles on the field, while Francisco Lindor cannot stop. Greg Allen appears as a kid in a candy store with his energy bouncing through the dugout, while Carlos Santana is as cool as they come even when he is having fun.
Bauer is an intelligent yet arrogant player who appears to be stubborn, sometimes to a fault. He doesn’t drink or smoke, and he spends his offseasons- and seasons- training as hard as any in the game. He studies the intricacies of pitching involving spin rate, pitching tunnels, effective velocity, and anything else that might give him even a small advantage on the hitters. His dedication to the science of baseball might lead to a paralysis by analysis at times, but he also is even keeled when stuck in a rut that is more due to random variance than anything he is doing on the mound. This obsession with researching baseball led him to the weighted balls, long toss, and other methods that helped him make it to MLB in the first place and spur some of the advancements in pitching but are also what alienated him from Miguel Montero and the Arizona Diamondbacks leading him to be traded away despite his high draft stature.
His favorite hobby is flying, racing, and recording video from drones. The same White Sox Garcia plays for also banned all drone flying from Guaranteed Rate Field after an incident a couple years ago where Bauer barely missed crashing into the scoreboard. Of course, drones also caused him to miss what could have been a critical 2016 ALCS game when he cut a pitching finger on a blade.
He is the type of player who will spend a Friday night online helping a young fan with her math homework, but there is another part of Bauer that loves to combat trolls he sees in life. For years, he played with those that brought the hate to his twitter account, until things escalated too far. Since that night, Bauer has seemingly learned his lesson as that twitter account has been boring, but Bauer remains anything but. The same player who once mimicked batting stances of teammates during interleague play because he so despised hitting himself, now spends his gamedays creating mini-baseball figurines of each teammate.
There will always be some fans who dislike Bauer. The self-assuredness with which he carries himself with undoubtedly rub many the wrong way. Still, he is not a Brett Myers with off field incidents to shield from the mind when cheering. He is not Chris Perez who derided fans. He is not John Rocker who constantly spewed ugliness.
No, Bauer is not any of those guys. He is simply someone who has leaned into every gift he has available- warts and all. Seeing him begin to realize his potential, while also becoming the current embodiment of Rick “Wild Thing” Vaughn has been fun. Here’s to more fun outings.
Besides, if the baseball thing doesn’t work out, then he might resurrect his rap career. No one wants that to happen.
26 Comments
It looks like this kerfuffle ended with no hard feelings, so that’s good. Afterward, Tito suggested that he wasn’t too fond of it.
BTW, how violent is Chicago? Yesterday Hammy said, “Mejia hit a bullet — literally — off of Shields’ leg.”
That was awesome.
Trevor Bauer, you magnificent thing. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ae3e494a89e2b31f101de390a4341c934fdf7b2be69f36da8c800c619d5fb909.gif
Francona also had stated he didn’t like J-Ram’s bat flip. I think Tito likes to smooth things over between teams as much as he can there.
For Hammy, it depends on your punctuation usage.
“Mejia hit a bullet, literally, off of Shields’ leg.”
or
“Mejia hit a bullet. Literally, off of Shields’ leg.”
The latter is two separate thoughts and is technically correct. The hit did literally hit Shields’ leg. I’m going to go that way because life’s too short to worry about the fringe stuff that might not even be an issue.
Heard the broadcast. Per Hammy, Shields was shot.
What are we talking about punctuation, and grammar for?
To be fair, he sure looked like he had been shot
I’ll give him a pass… he performs a live broadcast and talks for easily 300 to 400 hours per year.
Besides, his hyperbole is often appreciated to the monotonous diction of innings four and five.
Well played.
Are we not civilized?
http://www.gifimagesdownload.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/shaking-head-gif-550.gif
The kid is an absolute tool shed, but he’s our tool shed, so… ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Shields’s
https://media.giphy.com/media/jUwpNzg9IcyrK/giphy.gif
Meet Marty… the bearded Stick Figure
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e9a2ae9c56f458baa2454d5dd82ff89456ea6b6a077238bbcd97f8c35d1f82c9.png
https://media.giphy.com/media/ISy3kaatoyz0A/source.gif
Let’s not equivocate here. Bauer doesn’t just rub people the wrong way. He’s an alt-right conspiracy theorist idiot. It’s disingenuous to say that he is a little controversial without highlighting his backward ideology he spews on twitter.
https://waitingfornextyear.com/2017/02/trevor-bauer-politics-twitter-donald-trump/
Good one, Chris.
However, I feel clarification is needed here. I was making a JOKE about CHICAGO, which is the gunshot capital of the world. I wasn’t slamming the Ham, so to speak. If it had happened in any other city, I wouldn’t have mentioned it.
Honestly, I just wanted an excuse to use that comic. You were the undeserving victim.
I am proud to serve the WFNY community in any way I can.
I linked back to that article.
Also, if we are going to discuss the nuance, then let’s discuss the nuance. Bauer began that conversation noting how Twitter was putting too many “liberal news articles” in his TL (later to be revealed in moments, but whatever). Tons of trolls jumped on him. As Bauer had been doing, he trashed them back. They went too far, he went too far. If you had read Bauer in the past, you would realize he had escalated w/o regard many times in the past. People never cared until it became #politics. Then, he became as you state “an alt-right conspiracy theorist idiot” despite it being within the throes of people wishing cancer upon him (and him casually referencing suicide as an option). It was ugly all the way around.
He hadn’t been “an alt-right conspiracy theorist idiot” before that thread & he hasn’t been one since. To equate him as such despite him backing off “his twitter persona” since then is as bad as those who still call out Kaepernick for the pig socks & Castro statements. We all make stupid mistakes. Some are more public than others. Might be time to move on.
For those that were / are critical of Bauer and his stubbornness regarding the physics and analytics of pitching, Hattery does a splendid job of explaining why that may be in his best interests:
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/protecting-players-against-big-data/
https://twitter.com/search?l=&q=Immigrant%20OR%20Trump%20OR%20Wall%20OR%20Clinton%20OR%20Economy%20from%3ABauerOutage&src=typd
He was an alt-righter before the specific #politics thread you highlight and he has been that same person since. Just because someone stops posting does not mean his views have changed or he is any less of a bigot.
I went through that entire thread search you linked. Where are the “alt-right” tweets you proclaim? Where are the demonstrations of bigotry?
-Hillary Clinton killed people
-Obama was not born in the US
-Build the wall
– If you search deep into his twitter his extremely conservative ideology surrounding free-market capitalism and why it doesn’t work for some people but does work for others
Just to name a few
Last two decidedly not pure alt-right even if you disagree with him.
The Obama birth only said once and in that thread you specifically claim was not the only thread of note.
I didn’t see that Hillary statement. I’ll look later for it.