Drone didn’t drain Bauer of pitching power
ALCS: Cleveland starter insists he’s ready to go against Blue Jays in Game 3 despite freak injury to pinky
With two of it’s top three starters out of commission, starting pitching was thought to be the weak link in the Cleveland arsenal.
It may yet be, but two games into the American League Championship Series, it hasn’t turned out that way so far. Corey Kluber, as expected, was stingy. Josh Tomlin, perhaps not as expected, was almost equally effective.
Neither had to log big workloads in his respective outing because Terry Francona’s bullpen is something opponents don’t want to get into and, conversely, an area Cleveland wants to take advantage of.
With nary a Danny Salazar nor Carlos Carrasco sighting, Cleveland has pitched its way to a 2-0 lead and arrive in Toronto looking to put a stranglehold on the series.
That task will fall to the recently damaged hands of Trevor Bauer — and therein lies the one ray of hope for the Blue Jays fan looking for an end to this Cleveland pitching dominance.
Bauer and manager Terry Francona suggest this will not be the case.
For those under a rock the past few days, Bauer sliced open the pinky finger on his pitching hand Thursday night partaking in a pastime few of his contemporaries would even consider — making and maintaining his own drones.
Bauer has a fleet of about 10 of these homemade flying machines and even brought one to the podium with him to “answer any questions about what happened that I can’t answer.”
Bauer is not your run of the mill baseball player. He is a self-professed “big nerd,” a guy who majored in mechanical engineering in college and offers up his love of all things Star Wars.
But this nerd can pitch, too, and he’s confident that despite a bandaged right pinky finger he will not be at any disadvantage when he takes the mound Monday night.
“It’ really a non-issue,” Bauer said. “I’ve been able to throw normally and stuff.”
He has already thrown a few different days with it.
“I threw yesterday and there’s very, very minimal bleeding,” he said. “I can imagine with two more days that will completely stop. I don’t anticipate that being an issue at all.”
Against the Jays, Bauer has been really good of late and really, really bad before that. In two starts between 2013 and 2015 Bauer gave up 11 earned runs over a combined 5 2/3 innings for a 17.47 ERA and a Toronto batting average of .433.
That would be the numbers the Toronto optimists focus on.
The more relevant numbers are the two appearances (one start) he made against Toronto this year. In 13 innings over those two games, Bauer allowed two runs on seven hits while striking out 16 Jays and holding Toronto to a team batting average of .159.
Pinky finger injury or not, the Jays are once again likely to have their hands full with a Cleveland starter.