It’s easy to watch the Los Angeles Dodgers cutting bait with Trevor Bauer and think it’s a no-brainer. After all, there’s probably not a pitcher alive who is worth the distractions that Bauer will bring with him this season when he eventually signs with another team.
The Dodgers won 111 games last year without Bauer and can realistically expect Dustin May and Noah Syndergaard to replace the innings that they got last year from Tyler Anderson and Andrew Heaney. They likely are more worried about replacing Trea Turner’s offense than any holes in their pitching staff.
There’s a financial cost to cutting Bauer loose ($22.5 million in 2023), but they’ve paid David Price $32 million to pitch in long relief for the past two years, so sunk costs are nothing new to them. The real downside is if Bauer goes somewhere else and pitches like an ace, but the Dodgers have decided that’s a chance they are willing to take.
How likely is it that an MLB team will sign Trevor Bauer?
There are two parts to that answer. The first is whether someone signs Bauer. Frankly, that seems inevitable. The Dodgers may have the resources to cast him aside with few regrets (other than the financial costs, which could equate to the worst contract in Dodgers history), but there are 29 other teams, most of whom can convince themselves that they are one starter away from either making the playoffs or advancing deeper than they did last year. It’s not every day that a guy with a Cy Young on his resume can be had for the baseball version of minimum wage. Some team will bite.
The other aspect of the question is less clear-cut. Bauer clearly believes that he has been wronged, and he will return to the mound with a giant chip on his shoulder, which will only grow larger when he is subjected to scrutiny from fans and media. Some guys perform better with that kind of edge. Just based on how he has handled adversity in the past, such as throwing the ball over the center field fence when he got pulled from a game, it seems unlikely that Bauer has the temperament to fit in that category.
That’s pure speculation, of course, and Bauer doesn’t have to be the Cy Young version of himself to make a difference. The Cleveland version, where he was 50-32 his last three-plus seasons, with close to 200 innings every year and more than a strikeout per inning, would be an upgrade over the third starter on some playoff teams. There are guys who got signed huge free agent deals this offseason who are not as good as that version of Bauer.
But most third starters don’t come with the baggage that Bauer will carry for the rest of his career. The manager of whichever team signs Bauer can expect to answer questions about it every time he stands in front of the media. His future teammates probably won’t get a vote on whether he joins their team, but that front office has to trust that the team has enough chemistry to block out whatever distractions Bauer brings with him.
It’s a huge gamble, one that could put jobs in jeopardy if it goes south. But, by the middle of May, we’ll all be talking about half-dozen GMs and managers who are on the hot seat. For those guys, doing nothing might seem more likely to cost them their jobs than signing a guy like Bauer. That could be the point when someone takes the leap.