Trevor Bauer Injury: Do MLB Contracts Need a Sanity Clause?

After Cleveland Indians pitcher Trevor Bauer’s drone-related injury, will MLB teams need to think outside the box with the activities they ban in players’ contracts?

Trevor Bauer wasn’t the first and he won’t be the last to suffer an “off-duty injury” that impacted his ability to perform on the playing field. Innocently enough, here’s how he described the drone mishap that delayed his scheduled ALCS start:

“So I plugged it in, like I’ve done thousands and thousands of times, and for whatever reason it was sitting like this, I was plugging the battery in and my finger happened to be right here, and for whatever reason these three propellers didn’t spin like they were supposed to and this one spun up at max throttle. It never happened to me before. I have no idea why it happened. And my finger just happened to be in the way of the prop and it cut me.”

Simple, right? The damn max throttle is to blame. But whether or not the Cleveland Indians knew about his interest in flying and fixing drones, you can be sure they know about it now. And Bauer would be wise to begin preparing for his defense for when he and the club get together to talk about his next contract.

Discussions of that kind between a ball club and a player are nearly as old as baseball and they center around a battle between individual rights versus the rights of the party putting food on your table.

And with the huge sums of money being paid to athletes today, along with the prevalence of guaranteed contracts, thing can get a little testy at times. And sometimes, the results can even be tragic as it was in the case of Thurman Munson who died in a self-piloted plane crash in the middle of the Yankees’ 1979 season.

Later, Yankees owner George Steinbrenner would recall that,

“It was going to be a dealbuster. But I couldn’t afford to lose Thurman. I fought it like a tiger. I said, ‘Thurman, I’m giving you the best advice I can, don’t fly. I know a little bit about airplanes.’ But they insisted. Dick (Moss, Munson’s agent) said Thurman would not sign a contract with that prohibition.”

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In 2011, Business Insider (excellent read) took a look at what a typical baseball contract actually looks like. Not surprisingly, they almost always ban the obvious like boxing, skydiving, mountain climbing, etc. But in this ever changing world filled with technology, there’s always a new one that pops up (like drone flying) that previously wasn’t considered.

Plus, you have the world of the stupid, too, as when then Yankees pitcher Joba Chamberlain nearly died from bouncing around on a trampoline. Which raises the question about the need for common sense by the players and what should be a “duh” moment in their life that says, “You know what, maybe I shouldn’t do this.”

Players agent Leigh Steinberg also points out that,

“Young men in their early twenties believe they will live forever and feel that they’re at the top of their physical form. And since they’ve been able to physically master every activity in the world, there is nothing that has a significant risk of physical injury in any activity they engage in.”

So accidents will happen and boys will be boys. Tripping and falling down a flight of stairs is a common occurrence and ball players are not immune from such things happening. However, carrying a 150-pound air conditioner down a flight of stairs, or walking down after a couple of martinis is another matter.

Next: Pirates to Focus on Run Prevention in 2017

Trevor Bauer should consider himself a lucky man. He’s not missing anything and is only being pushed back from Game 2 to Game 3 scheduled for 8pm tonight. And, just maybe, he might consider putting his toys away for awhile.

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