Steve Webb
LOS ANGELES, CA — Suddenly, the Dodgers’ reluctance to spend money during this offseason is starting to make a lot more sense. As of today (or some are reporting tomorrow), troubled pitcher Trevor Bauer will be officially re-instated to Major League Baseball, his two year suspension being reduced to 194 games.
ESPN is reporting that the Dodgers were expecting a decision, but not for another couple of weeks. And so, their statement has a bit of a rushed-and-unprepared feel to it. This is the team’s statement, released shortly after the announcement: “We have just been informed of the arbitrator’s ruling and will comment as soon as practical.”
Bauer’s legal team — consisting of Jon Fetterolf, Shawn Holley and Rachel Luba — also put out a statement, writing: “While we are pleased that Mr. Bauer has been reinstated immediately, we disagree that any discipline should have been imposed. That said, Mr. Bauer looks forward to his return to the field, where his goal remains to help his team win a World Series.”
As for Bauer, he too took to social media on Thursday night, delivering a typically Bauer-esque statement.
Notice that both the Bauer team and Bauer himself were very careful not to mention the Dodgers in their statements. The first statement says that Bauer is eager to help “his team” win a World Series. And Bauer is looking forward to seeing baseball fans at “a stadium soon”. That to me suggests that they can see the writing on the wall, and that the chances of coming back to the team are not great.
However, the ball is definitely in the Dodgers’ court now. I’m sure this is a decision that they were hoping that they wouldn’t have to make. No doubt the front office was hoping that the two-year suspension would be upheld, thus releasing them from all their contractual obligations with the former Cy Young winner. However, that didn’t happen, and now the Dodgers are in a no-win situation.
If they bite the bullet, eat the Bauer salary, and release him, they are essentially flushing more than $25 million down the toilet, as they will still be on the hook for the salary, regardless of who might or might not sign him for next year.
If they give Bauer one of those notorious “second chances” that professional athletes always seem to be getting, they risk being looked at as the sleazebags who care more about winning than domestic violence.
Neither option is great. But this is a mess completely of the Dodgers’ doing. The time for avoiding this problem was back in 2020, when Bauer became a free agent in the first place. But the Dodgers’ front office decided that they were willing to look the other way on a handful of questionable actions on Bauer’s part and hope that they could keep their mercurial star on the straight and narrow long enough to secure a second-straight World Series title.
It lasted all of three months.
The Dodgers have sown the wind. Now, they reap the whirlwind. And they’ve got nobody to blame but themselves.
