The Los Angeles Dodgers fell just short of sweeping the Oakland Athletics earlier this week, but it wasn’t for a lack of effort on Trevor Bauer’s part as he logged a second consecutive quality start to begin the regular season.
The right-hander allowed just two runs on three hits and struck out 10 batters in 6.2 innings of work. Bauer found success with a different approach against the Athletics lineup, mixing in more offspeed pitches early in the count.
One day after his solid performance, a report surfaced that Major League Baseball was looking into the possibility of Bauer potentially using banned substances on baseballs.
The 30-year-old took to Twitter to criticize the league for singling him out and not investigating other pitchers:
Lol always fun reading desperate and misleading clickbait headlines from national gossip bloggers. To translate fake journalist speak for y’all, “It’s unclear whether” = “I can’t be bothered to look into this cuz it doesn’t fit my narrative.” 🤷🏻♂️🤷🏻♂️ wonder where the articles about
— Trevor Bauer (トレバー・バウアー) (@BauerOutage) April 9, 2021
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
Prior to the 2021 season, MLB announced that it would begin cracking down on pitchers’ suspected use of banned substances. The league specifically said in a memo to all 30 teams that it would use Statcast data to analyze potential increases in spin rate.
That Bauer is an early focal point doesn’t come as a surprise. His spin rate increased during a Cy Young Award season in 2020, and he has regularly been critical of MLB and commissioner Rob Manfred.
Bauer felt start against Athletics was ‘mixed bag’
Despite limiting baserunners in his start against the A’s, Bauer wasn’t thrilled with his command. “Mixed bag. I thought my stuff was really good, dealt with some in between inning adjustments that I made,” he said.
“Just behind a lot, like 1-0, 2-0, so I’ve got to clean that up,” Bauer said of his outing against the Athletics. That’s one thing that was really good about my first start, I was 84% first-pitch strikes and I was nowhere close to that today.
“Got a little bit frustrated, but thought I competed well and my stuff was really good. Obviously, I would’ve liked to not give up the two-out run on a wild pitch. There’s some things I’ve got to clean up, but overall I think it was fine.”
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