Trevor Bauer trolls Red Sox Nation late Sunday afternoon
The season may have ended a long time ago for the Red Sox but for eight teams the postseason is alive and well. And because the season is still underway, teams cannot communicate with those heading for free agency. Any interaction between a team and a player heading to free agency can mean bad things from the league. So when a picture from soon to be free agent Trevor Bauer hit Twitter, the Fenway Faithful got a bit riled up.
Per the rules, and we all love those sweet sweet rules, players aren’t technically free agents until five days after the final out of the World Series. It doesn’t matter if your team was eliminated week one or was playing for the Commissioner’s Trophy, the season doesn’t officially end until just under a week after the Series concludes. Meaning, teams, and players can’t begin negotiating until that calendar officially flips from the 2020 campaign on over to 2021. So, what does Bauer get from his shenanigans?
Hey @redsox you up? pic.twitter.com/2g1Pkyr4WI
— Trevor Bauer (トレバー・バウアー) (@BauerOutage) October 4, 2020
To answer that question as easily as possible, it drives fans wild and his potential salary up. Something as little as posting this picture to his Twitter with a snarky comment instantly creates talking points for fans and media, this blog as an example. If he can create enough buzz around a possible move to the Red Sox for 2021, then he can also command a big salary from Boston’s desperate ownership.
After back-to-back miserable seasons, Boston’s top brass are eager to get back to their winning ways and they have the money to make it happen. There are a lot of things up in the air still in regards to the starting rotation, but adding Bauer to that mix would only help stabilize it. I wrote about the five free-agents that the Red Sox need to target this winter and Trevor was my top pick of the mix.
We’ve recently gotten some good news that both Chris Sale and Eduardo Rodriguez have been given the go-ahead to begin mounting their comebacks to the Red Sox for the 2021 season. Despite that positive news, we still have no idea of when they’ll be able to return or in what form they’ll return in. This is why Chaim Bloom needs to go after a strong starting pitcher this winter, Bauer fits that bill perfectly.
He can carry the workload of the rotation ace while Nathan Eovaldi and Martin Perez back him up in supporting roles. Add in the possibility of Tanner Houck and Nick Pivetta continuing their strong outings into next year and this rotation can be scary good. A potential NL Cy Young winner this year, he finished with a 5-4 record through 73.0 IP, leading the Reds to the postseason. He also led the Nation League in ERA (1.73), ERA+ (276), and WHIP (0.795), while leading the entire MLB in CG (2), SHO (2), and H9 (5.1). Absolutely stunning stuff from the brash hurler.
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As we all know though, Bauer isn’t one to hold his tongue and that could rub the Boston media the wrong way, but then again, what doesn’t. His biggest target as of late as been MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred and this picture could possibly set off his foes radar to some foul play. If you’ve read anything that I’ve written about our Commissioner then you know how I feel about Uncle Manfred, so Bauer is my kind of guy.
At the end of the day, this is most likely just another fun troll job by the soon to be free agent. He’s too smart to get himself in trouble for speaking to a team prior to the window opening and I doubt Chaim Bloom or the Red Sox would even entertain the idea. Considering the heat that is on Boston from the 2018 sign-stealing allegation, there’s no way in hell that they’d risk getting on the Commissioner’s bad side again.
With a month left on the calendar before free agents can begin talking to teams, the timing just isn’t right for a possible meeting with the Red Sox. If the picture came out during the World Series, then I’d lean towards the two sides preparing for a meeting. But at this point in time, it just seems far too soon for either side to be risking any sort of issues with the Commissioner’s office. One thing is for sure, Bauer definitely made some noise this afternoon and it got Sox fans thinking about him pitching for Boston every fifth day.