Decision on Bauer looming for MLB
On Friday, Major League Baseball must make a decision about Trevor Bauer, about whether to extend the Dodgers’ pitcher’s paid administrative leave for the seventh time.
By Friday’s deadline, Bauer’s paid 47-day vacation will have earned him $8,123,457. Which is a pretty nice bonus for a man who, in any other circumstances, would be in jail.
It was hard to follow baseball from the Olympics in Japan. It was even harder to follow the local playoff races from vacation in Hawaii, where — inexplicably — all five California teams are blacked out. I guess the reasoning goes that if you really want to watch the Angels or the A’s, you can make the 5,000-mile roundtrip flight to attend a game?
What was not blacked out or hard to follow in either location was the repellent saga of Bauer, the Dodgers’ major offseason free-agent signing, who is under investigation for sexual assault.
MLB gets a lot of things wrong, including its absurd blackout policy. What it can’t afford to get wrong is the Bauer situation.
Bauer is accused by a 27year-old woman of brutal sexual assault over the course of two sexual encounters. Though both sides agree that the encounters were consensual and that the woman invited rough sex, the details that emerged were sickening.
Last week, a judge ruled against the accuser, denying an extension of a restraining order against Bauer, saying there was no indication it was needed because the two would not be in proximity again. Bauer’s legal team portrayed this ruling as a huge victory.
If that was a victory, I’d hate to see what a loss looks like. What emerged in the hearing was stomach-turning. The woman testified for more than nine hours in court, saying that Bauer brutalized her during sex, punched her with a closed fist in her face and body and near her vagina and choked her unconscious and sodomized her while she was unconscious. Her lawyers introduced evidence of her injuries from hospital records and the testimony of a trauma nurse saying the bruising was alarming.
A criminal investigation into the accusations continues, which is why Bauer keeps getting his paid vacation extended. The Washington Post
reported that Bauer faced a similar allegation by an Ohio woman in 2017, and that he also threatened to kill that woman.
Bauer took the Fifth Amendment against selfincrimination, of course, declining to testify in his own defense. While he was silent, his lawyers worked hard to do the predictable victim shaming and blaming, going through the woman’s sexual history and willingness to engage in rough sex. But the violence wasn’t denied. Nor was the fact that it was her interaction with Bauer, not other men, that put her in the hospital.
Bauer beat a woman while she was unconscious, an act that obviously could have led to murder.
Major League Baseball’s sexual-assault policy states: “Sexual assault refers to a range of behaviors, including a completed nonconsensual sex act, an attempted nonconsensual sex act, and/or nonconsensual sexual contact. Lack of consent is inferred when a person uses force, harassment, threat of force, threat of adverse personnel or disciplinary action, or other coercion, or when the victim is asleep, incapacitated, unconscious or legally incapable of consent.”
Check that last paragraph about lack of consent: inferred when a person uses force … or when the victim is incapacitated or unconscious.
Major League Baseball also does not need a criminal charge or conviction to hand down its punishment. With all of MLB’s struggles, it does not need someone like Bauer taking up a spot on the reigning world champions’ roster. Playing professional baseball is a privilege and should be treated as such.
From the start, it seemed odd that the Dodgers would take a chance on Bauer. They finally won a World Series last year and seemed to have a cohesive clubhouse full of stand-up guys like Clayton Kershaw and Mookie Betts. Why would an already loaded club bring in a toxic, polarizing player like Bauer, who came complete with a bad history of bullying women online?
The Dodgers have tried to maintain a squeakyclean image over the years. It hasn’t always held up: In 2015, there were two incidents of alleged sexual assault in their minorleague system that didn’t come to light until years later. When they were exposed, it painted the Dodgers’ organization in a terrible light, but two of the people in the chain of command — Giants manager Gabe Kapler and president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi — had departed by that time.
However, Andrew Friedman was the man in charge then and he’s the man in charge now. He’s the one who made the decision to sign Bauer, surely patting himself on the back for the short-term deal: three years for $102 million.
Now the Dodgers are paying Bauer millions to stay away while he drags the franchise’s iconic blue and white jersey through his slime.
He went on paid leave July 2 and, as the sordid details of his situation continued to come out, his team appeared to be paying the price. The Dodgers struggled, going 19-15 and falling a seasonhigh five games behind the Giants.
But they traded for Max Scherzer — the anti-Bauer — and have surged, winning nine straight before falling Sunday. Coincidence? Or a sigh of relief ? Perhaps the revelations about Bauer made it clear that he’s no longer a part of the team and won’t be involved in any playoff race or any part of the “Dodger way” going forward.
Major League Baseball has a deadline Friday. Its decision seems obvious. But MLB has been known to do the wrong thing, all too often.