Tag Archives: domestic violence

“Extremely disappointing?” How about unacceptable?

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Julio Urías

A second domestic violence case and administrative leave for the Dodgers’ lefthander.

Sitting thirteen games in first place would be heaven for any baseball team. Perhaps not so much now for the National League West’s Dodgers, who must feel since Labour Day weekend as though someone signed a deal with the devil and the devil came to collect with usurious interest.

A 24-5 August shot them that far ahead of the divisional pack. A 1-5 September beginning is usually the kind that such a team flicks away like a nuisance of a mosquito. It’s what they learned after beating the NL East ogres from Atlanta on Sunday, thwarting a sweep, that must have the Dodgers feeling as though no good deeds go unpunished.

On the same night they beat the Braves, Los Angeles Exposition Park police arrested the Dodgers’ lefthanded pitcher Julio Urías on “suspicion of felony corporal injury on a spouse.” Released on a $50,000 bond, Urías has a court date on 27 September. In the interim, his scheduled start against the Marlins in Miami Thursday is a non-starter.

“We are aware of an incident involving Julio Urías,” the Dodgers Xtweeted in a formal statement on Labour Day itself. “While we attempt to learn all the facts, he will not be traveling with the team. The organization has no further comment at this time.” It’s not the first time the Dodgers have been there with Urías, who was arrested four years ago over a physical incident with a woman in a shopping center parking lot.

But then, Urías faced no formal charges when the victim in question subsequently told authorities she had fallen, yet baseball’s government elected to suspend him twenty days while it investigated that incident.

This time, Urías could face a far longer suspension. And, the end of his days as a Dodger. And in that order. TMZ has reported “multiple sources” say Urías shoved “a woman” against a fence at BMO Stadium in Los Angeles, with stadium workers breaking it up, before the pair got into a car “where we’re told things once again got heated.”

“Which shows that he was, once again, content to be violent towards a woman in front of thousands of strangers,” wrote Craig Calcaterra in Cup of Coffee Thursday. “That says a lot, frankly. I mean, if you’re willing to be violent like that in front of others, imagine what you’re doing in private.”

Urías was placed on administrative leave by MLB Wednesday. He was due to hit the free agency market during the coming off-season. His 2023 season hasn’t exactly been top of the line, but he might still have commanded a handsome payday based on his overall track record. A record that includes leading the National League last year with his 2.16 earned run average. And, that he sealed the Dodgers’ first World Series triumph since the Reagan Administration, crowning two and a third innings’ spotless relief when he struck Tampa Bay’s Willy Adames out on three pitches to finish Game Six of the 2020 Series.

It’s difficult to picture the Dodgers wanting Urías back with what amounts to a spousal battery charge against him. It took long enough, of course, but the Dodgers cut ties with Trevor Bauer over his too-well-detailed sexual violence after his precedent-setting suspension was lifted last winter.

Maybe, just maybe, no MLB team will be willing to take the chance with a guy having two such cases on his resumé, unless Urías makes a truly contrite, above-and-beyond, verifiable commitment away from domestic violence.

But the further bad news has been the boilerplate language emitted in the immediate wake of the Urías arrest. “Obviously, extremely disappointing development,” said Dodgers general manager Andrew Friedman. “It’s just an extremely unfortunate circumstance for everyone,” said manager Dave Roberts.

Extremely disappointing? Extremely unfortunate? How about unacceptable? How about speaking unambiguous, plain language against treating women like punching bags?

How about the Dodgers remembering how they flinched over consummating a deal for Aroldis Chapman from the Reds after learning Chapman was involved in a domestic violence dispute, even one that didn’t end in his arrest?

How about remembering that, in his 2019 case and suspension, Urías’s formal statement was 169 words worth of nothingburger other than those which caused some to infer he was sorry-not sorry that he hadn’t actually bruised the woman in question when he shoved her to the ground?

How about remembering what Bauer put them through and proclaiming bluntly that physically abusing a woman can’t be tolerated in the Dodger organisation or anywhere else? How about the Dodgers reminding themselves that, both in 2019 and last Sunday, Urías was accused of attacking a woman in public places?

Then they could worry about what losing Urías does to their already-compromised starting rotation depth. (Tony Gonsolin and Dustin May: season-ending surgeries. Future Hall of Famer Clayton Kershaw: working his way back from shoulder issues, he surrendered a pair of home runs and three earned runs against the Marlins Tuesday, leaving Chris Taylor to re-tie the game at three with a homer before Dodger reliever Ryan Yarbrough surrendered three more on a pair of bombs for the 6-3 Dodger loss.)

They didn’t have to wait for the deeper details to come forth to take an unmistakeable stand. They didn’t even have to wait for MLB to put Urías under administrative leave Wednesday to say what their formal statement said thereupon: We do not condone or excuse any acts of domestic violence.

The Yankees are fabled among many things for a sign above the doorway from the Yankee Stadium clubhouse to the dugout, quoting Hall of Famer Joe DiMaggio’s speech on a day in his honour in the late 1940s: “I thank the Good Lord for making me a Yankee.” Maybe the Dodgers and all other teams in baseball should hang one saying, We will not condone or excuse domestic violence.

And mean it.

Due diligence dropped over Clevinger?

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Mike Clevinger, Olivia Finestead

White Sox pitcher Mike Clevinger  is accused of attacking  former girlfriend Olivia Finestead and their ten-month-old daughter. Was that why the Padres let him walk into free agency? Were the White Sox completely unaware of the MLB probe when they signed him?

Two major league teams sit on edge over righthanded pitcher Mike Clevinger. One is the White Sox, who signed him as a free agent over the offseason. The other is the Padres, who let him walk into the free agency pool.

The edge is a baseball government investigation into accusations that Clevinger slapped the mother of his ten-month-old daughter around, threw an iPad at her while she was pregnant, tried to strangle her, and threw a load of tobacco juice at the little girl herself.

Olivia Finestead told reporters Clevinger did both last June, while the Padres were in Los Angeles for a set against the Dodgers. She provided photographic evidence to support the accusation. She said she gave Clevinger “leeway” for a considerable period while trying to mediate to retrieve some of her possessions and establish parameters for supervised visitation between Clevinger and their daughter.

Clevinger himself faced the press on day one at the White Sox’s spring training compound in Glendale, Arizona. One moment, he said he wanted to address “the elephant in the room.” The next, he tried steering the presser back to baseball.

“I’m not going to hide away from it,” the righthander said. “I didn’t do anything wrong. It’s really embarrassing. It’s not who I am. Now I’ve got to sit here on my first day and answer questions about it like I am one of those people. It is devastating but I’m here to answer to the bell and I’m excited to see when the facts come out.”

That’s an intriguing way to put it. He’s “excited” to see when the facts come out? You can think of far less cavalier adjectives to apply to the net result of an MLB investigation training on whether you slapped a woman who gave birth to one of your three children and then threw what some might consider toxic waste at the little girl to whom she gave birth.

But no. Clevinger says wait until there’s “actual evidence . . . Just wait for there to be actual evidence before you start making judgments and stuff. This is about my children that I care about even more than this game.” (Clevinger has two older daughters with a different woman.)

Eyes fall upon the Padres, as San Diego Union-Tribune columnist Bryce Miller observed when the accusations were revealed last month, “because “[w]hat might concern fans and others trying to sift and sort what the Padres knew and could do about it sprung up when Finestead relayed that she had been talking to MLB’s Department of Investigations since the summer.”

Translation: What did the Padres really know, and how soon did they really know? Concurrently, what could they have done under MLB’s domestic violence protocol, which bars a club from disciplining an accused player without MLB permission. (Both MLB and the Dodgers put Trevor Bauer on ice in the first place, remember.)

“Were the allegations,” Miller asked, “part of the stew of reasoning for allowing Clevinger to wade into free agency, along with coughing up five runs in 2 2/3 innings against the Dodgers in the NLDS and failing to record an out against the Phillies in the NLCS? Were there character questions behind the scenes?”

Those questions turn into due diligence questions for the White Sox, who made Clevinger their first free agency addition this past offseason. Now, as the Chicago Tribune‘s Paul Sullivan wryly notes, he’s their number one albatross. “How much the Sox vetted Clevinger is another issue they need to examine but probably won’t,” Sullivan writes. “While they might not have known of the allegations when they signed Clevinger, as they said in a statement, the Sox obviously liked his character and believed he would be a good fit in the clubhouse.”

Put domestic violence to one side for one moment. The White Sox might have forgotten when Clevinger, then a Guardian (they were still known as the Indians at the time), violated COVID protocols in 2020. He and fellow pitcher Zack Plesac went out for a restaurant dinner and a card game with friends in Chicago without getting the team’s approval to go.

The team sent Plesac back to Cleveland in a private car but had no idea Clevinger was involved until he flew back to Cleveland with the team—including cancer-fighting pitcher Carlos Carrasco (a Met since 2021), who’d been immuno-compromised from his cancer treatments. Plesac decided it was all the media’s fault for reporting it, not his or Clevinger’s fault for doing it.

Then, Clevinger was merely immature and irresponsible. Now, he may have graduated from those to dangerous.

When White Sox general manager Rick Hahn was asked how the club could avoid walking eyes wide shut again into a situation involving a player under domestic violence investigation, the only thing missing from his word salad was dressing and croutons.

“We had several conversations at that time about what are we getting from a makeup standpoint,” Hahn told reporters. “There certainly were some positives in terms of work ethic and focus and desire to win and compete and understanding of his own mechanics and efforts to improve, which are positives. But there were maturity questions. He’d admit that probably by his own volition. That’s what I was referring to in terms of we’ve had similar guys who have had reputational questions.”

Most recently, it was Hall of Fame manager Tony La Russa, whom the White Sox brought back to the dugout despite a second DUI. Once a shrewd, forward-thinking skipper, La Russa’s in-game managing now drew him under fire enough despite a division title his first comeback season that, when his pacemaker barked, he retired after his second.

“That wasn’t a case of bad vetting but of Reinsdorf wanting La Russa to manage his team no matter what anyone else thought,” Sullivan writes. “La Russa could’ve bowed out once the news became public but didn’t feel the need . . . [He] never was going to get the benefit of the doubt from a large and vocal segment of Sox fans. Neither will Clevinger if he’s allowed to pitch in 2023. But unlike La Russa, Reinsdorf has no personal relationship with Clevinger, so there’s no need to pretend fans eventually will grow to like Clevinger.”

We should note in fairness that Finestead herself doesn’t look askance at the White Sox. “I was told the @whitesox didn’t have a clue of [Clevinger’s] investigation,” she posted online. “Can’t blame an organisation for something they don’t know.”

But there are still too many fans, baseball and other sports, who are too willing to overlook or forgive such grotesquery as domestic violence so long as those accused and exposed can get it done in the game. He beat/attacked his wife/child/girlfriend/one-night stand? The guy’s going to help pitch us to a World Series or quarterback us to the playoffs, so run along, old man, you bother us.

It should bother the Padres and their fans that they may have had little choice but to bite the bullet and wait until Clevinger left as a free agent.

It should bother the White Sox and their fans that they either got caught with their proverbial pants down signing him or that those in the front office responsible for vetting him fell short of full due diligence.

It should also bother Met fans that—after an offseason of bravery and boldness; wading into the free agency pool and coming up Justin Verlander, while turning away from Jacob deGrom and Carlos Correa over health concerns; re-upping keys Brandon Nimmo (outfield), Jeff McNeil (infield/outfield), and Edwin Diaz (relief pitching)—the Mets invited outfielder Kahlil Lee to spring training despite his own domestic violence issue. His former girlfriend, Keriwyn Hill, charges that he choked her and pulled her hair violently during an argument last May, while Lee played for the Mets’ Syracuse AAA team. (MLB is also investigating the Lee case.)

It should bother any decent human being. Just as it should bother us that there are still too many men who think touching a woman for any reason other than to express love is acceptable.

Bauer isn’t quite off the hook at last

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Trevor Bauer

He may not face prospects of prison, but Trevor Bauer—shown in the visitors’ dugout at San Francisco’s Oracle Park—isn’t quite off the whole hook yet.

Please note very carefully the language of the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office when announcing Trevor Bauer won’t face criminal charges in the sexual assault/domestic violence case that cost him half the 2021 season. “After a thorough review of all the available evidence,” the statement says, “including the civil restraining order proceedings, witness statements and the physical evidence, the People are unable to prove the relevant charges beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Those words mean Bauer simply won’t face a criminal prosecution, never mind that he doesn’t face the prospect of time behind bars. Those words don’t say the evidence is false as much as they say getting a criminal conviction at trial would be tougher than hitting an outside slider over the center field fence. But Bauer isn’t off the hook entirely, so far as the law and the courts are concerned.

He’s off the criminal hook, but the victim who obtained a temporary restraining order against him last June could still decide to hit back with a civil lawsuit. Such has happened in cases far more grave. Over a quarter century ago, a botched criminal murder trial didn’t prevent the family of one of O.J. Simpson’s victims from suing him and winning.

So far as Major League Baseball is concerned, Bauer could still face serious discipline from commissioner Rob Manfred, who isn’t bound by a lack of criminal charges from exercising baseball’s domestic violence policies and punishments. Neither are the Dodgers.

They may have said formally that they won’t comment publicly until MLB’s investigation is done, but it doesn’t mean they can’t cut ties with him when it’s done. They can terminate Bauer’s deal if he “fail[ed], refuse[d] or neglect[ed] to conform his personal conduct to the standards of good citizenship and good sportsmanship or to keep himself in first-class physical condition or to obey the club’s training rules.”

When Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Dianna Gould-Saltman lifted the original temporary restraining order, last August, you may remember, she ruled that Bauer’s victim was “not ambiguous about wanting rough sex in [their] . . . first encounter and wanting rougher sex in the second encounter.” But the victim was anything except ambiguous when testifying in court that she drew a line, in effect, between agreed-upon rough sex and unwanted assault.

I say again that you wish only that Gould-Saltman explained how the victim was supposed to keep making her boundaries clear, or to stop Bauer from crossing them further, when she was in dreamland after Bauer choked her unconscious with her own hair in the first place.

Bauer’s legal beagles mulcted inconsistencies from her then that spoke, as former NBC Sports analyst Craig Calcaterra wrote for Cup of Coffee at the time, “to secondary and surrounding matters—how she reacted to the assault—and not at all to the assault itself . . . What Bauer’s attorneys did not do at all was discredit the central claim that he assaulted her in horrible ways.”

Maybe that makes it harder for the accuser to recover any money from him in a civil suit. Maybe that makes a prosecutor less likely to bring a criminal claim against Bauer for fear of the case being difficult. But the central truth of this entire affair—the stuff that Major League Baseball will look to regarding Bauer’s behavior, irrespective of whether charges are brought—points pretty clearly to Bauer doing exactly what his accuser said he did. Everything else is secondary.

After 12 hours of testimony, his accuser said, under oath, “I did not consent to bruises all over my body that sent me to the hospital and having that done to me while I was unconscious.” There was zero evidence presented which explained how those bruises appeared in a way that was benign or refuted the idea that the woman was unconscious when Bauer inflicted them. That, in my mind, is all that matters.

While baseball nation grappled with the Bauer ramifications, the Nationals found themselves facing a domestic violence issue when infielder Starlin Castro faced domestic violence charges but wasn’t yet suspended or even placed on “administrative leave.” Nats general manager Mike Rizzo made it as plain as a line single when talking to reporters then: “The process is the process. You asked the question, ‘Do I plan on having Starlin Castro back?’ and I said I do not plan on having him back.”

Rizzo even held a meeting with his players and laid down the law: “it’s unacceptable and it’s zero tolerance here and I don’t care how good of a player you are, it’s zero tolerance and we’re just not going to put up with it.” And they didn’t. The moment Castro was hit with a thirty-day suspension, the Nats said publicly they’d release him the moment his suspension ended. On 3 September they made good on that promise.

Nobody says the Dodgers are thrilled over Bauer’s misbehaviours, but it’s hard to forget team president Stan Kasten telling reporters what he advised manager Dave Roberts after Bauer was put on the first of his renewed administrative leaves last July: “I told him they’re going to talk about Trevor Bauer. Just say, ‘Can we please talk about foreign substances?'” That got nothing but a terrible look for the Dodgers and a public rebuke from Manfred.

The Dodgers haven’t yet said whether domestic violence is zero tolerance, they’re just not going to put up with it, they do not plan on having Bauer back, and as soon as they know whether Bauer will receive a full MLB suspension—whether it’s retroactive to time served on administrative leave or new time to serve—they’ll prepare his release for the moment the suspension officially expires.

Maybe it was easier for the Nats because Castro was almost at the end of a two-year deal when he got drydocked. Bauer is in the middle of a three-year deal, signed when the worst the Dodgers knew of him was that he was a mere misogynist. The Dodgers are on the hook for $32 million in 2022 and 2023 each, unless Bauer opts out at the end of the 2022 season and elects free agency. But Rizzo still looked far more decisive, and sounded far more emphatic, than the Dodgers have done so far.

“[Y]ou’ve heard me say it a million times, that [we prefer] you read about our guys in the Sports section and not the other sections,” Rizzo said amidst the Castro flap. “And this time we failed. I’m responsible for the players that I put on our roster and on the field.” That’s called owning it emphatically, and doing something about it decisively.

Businesses with or without public transmission can and do discipline employees often enough over off-the-job misconduct that won’t necessarily put them behind bars and isn’t half as grotesque, never mind abusive and injurious. There’s no such thing as an absolute, God-given “right” to particular employment in a particular business or profession.

A predilection for consensual rough sex is one thing. Each to his and her own. But punching an unconsious woman in the poontang and bruising her enough to require hospital attention, while she’s in no position to say yes, no, stop, or don’t-even-think-about-it, isn’t just unaligned to being a good citizen or sportsman. It’s unaligned to being human.

What took so long?

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Trevor Bauer

Trevor Bauer waited as long to go on administrative leave for abuse as  Hector Santiago waited to get grounded ten days for actual/alleged naughty sauce. What’s wrong with that picture? Plenty.

Get caught with legal rosin mixing with your own natural sweat? You baaaaaad boy! No going out to play for you for ten days, Hector Santiago.

Take rough sex too far and leave a woman bruised, undergoing CT scans, and finally filing a restraining order against you this week, under penalty of perjury? You’re still starting in regular rotation, Trevor Bauer . . . on the Fourth of July. In Washington, yet.

At least, you were, until MLB did Friday what it should have done on Wednesday, when the details came forth, and put you on seven days’ administrative leave.

Until then, it looked as though Santiago took heavier immediate consequences for actual or alleged naughty sauce than Bauer did leaving a woman with head and facial trauma, a partial basilar skull fracture, and blood around where she accuses him of trying a back door slider while she was out cold and in no position to allow it.

You can run the entire history of professional baseball and find players disciplined quickly and heavily for behaviour a lot less grave that what Bauer’s accused of having done to the lady. But then you can also still find too many people learning about Babe Ruth’s penchant for partying with gangsters and hookers and thinking it’s still just part of the big lout’s appeal.

Maybe the Dodgers couldn’t discipline Bauer unilaterally at once, as Sports Illustrated‘s Stephanie Apstein noted Thursday afternoon. But there was no law saying manager Dave Roberts couldn’t decide to hand the ball to another pitcher to start in Bauer’s place, especially on the anniversary of a declaration saying we’re entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The pursuit of happiness isn’t supposed to leave a woman’s head resembling a boxing gym’s speed bag. Not even if she was looking for just a little rough and wild sex.

Unless I’ve been led down one or another primrose path, even a little rough and wild sex isn’t supposed to end in head and face trauma, a partial basilar skull fracture, and blood on the seat God provided the human anatomy. Compared to that, The Thrilla in Manila (Muhammad Ali vs. Joe Frazier, the brutal Act III) was a dance contest.

Baseball’s domestic violence policy, Apstein reminded us, includes that baseball’s government can put an accused player on paid administrative leave up to seven days while investigating the accusations. MLB and the Major League Baseball Players Association can extend that period by mutual agreement, she observes.

“Perhaps MLB is waiting until Sunday so as not to start the clock,” she continued. “If they wait, that would keep him out of action until after the All-Star Break. That may make sense legally. It is indefensible morally.”

These people are so consumed with technicalities that they can’t be bothered to do the right thing. “We are not going to start Trevor Bauer on Sunday.” Not “We are going to take away Trevor Bauer’s money.” Not “We are going to suspend him.” Not “We are going to release him.” Not “We are going to throw him in prison.” Just “We are not going to offer this man the privilege of striding out to a mound in front of tens of thousands of people who paid for a nice afternoon.”

Let’s remember the word “privilege.” That’s what playing professional, major league baseball is. It’s not a basic human right. You won’t find any clause in the Supreme Law of the Land declaring you have the absolute right to any particular line of work.

The document over whose anniversary baseball and the nation is about to make a red, white, and blue racket—the like of which probably hasn’t been seen in long enough, after last year’s pan-damn-ic rudely interrupted such things—doesn’t say, “We hold this truth further, that you have the right to your particular chosen job, period, no matter what criminal behaviour you might commit while thus employed.”

Apstein said commissioner Rob Manfred—a man who normally points the way to wisdom by standing athwart it—should have put Bauer on administrative leave immediately. She also said the Dodgers’ administration should have ordered Roberts to hand the Fourth of July ball to anyone but Bauer, instead of Roberts telling reporters he’s still giving Bauer the ball.

While she was at it, she zapped that brass for leaving Roberts out to answer press questions by himself.

“Instead,” Apstein continued, “fans of the Dodgers and of the sport and of civil society have to wait days to learn whether a man accused of breaking a woman’s skull will get to pitch on the Fourth of July in the nation’s capital.”

The Athletic‘s Dodgers reporter Fabian Ardaya tweeted Thursday afternoon that Roberts also said the team’s “direction” was to do nothing “until they get guidance from MLB.” Since when does a team need guidance from baseball’s government to just take the ball from one pitcher and hand it to another?

The Dodgers have their guidance now. It took only two days from The Athletic’s Brittany Ghiroli’s and Katie Strang’s running down the literally gory details in the restraining order filing to get it. It shouldn’t have taken that long.

MLB was still a little too slow on the proverbial uptake. So were the Dodgers. They should have gotten ahead of it and changed Fourth of July pitchers at minimum to open. This is a look about which “ugly” would be an understatement for the team half a game out of first in the National League West.

Why did Manfred and his office wait so long to put Bauer on administrative leave? When former Cubs shortstop Addison Russell was first accused of abuse against his then-wife in 2018, MLB put him on administrative leave at once. When Yankee pitcher Domingo German was accused likewise in 2019, MLB put him on administrative leave likewise.

Both were suspended in due course, but the players’ union approved extensions of the administrative leaves first. What on earth was the hesitation now?

The presumption of innocence? Legally, that’s in a court of law. Morally, you don’t surrender it when you remove a pitcher from duty whose mind is occupied by matters more grave than trying to sneak fastballs or breaking balls past Kyle Schwarber, Trea Turner, and Juan Soto on the Fourth of July.

“Would the union fight a similar extension with Bauer?” another Athletic writer, Ken Rosenthal, asked. Then, he answers at once: “Perhaps, if it believed the league was acting unfairly. The union, after all, exists to defend and assert the rights of the players. But based on the details in the domestic violence restraining order against Bauer, the union also might view a prolonged investigation into his conduct as warranted.”

Somehow, it’s still impossible to believe that a pitcher caught with his sweat mixing to legal rosin and ending up in his glove—which, by the way, MLB turned out not to have inspected—almost faced heavier immediate consequences than a player under legal restraining order over leaving a woman injured, feeling abused, and more than a little afraid.

“[H]ow ridiculous would it look for MLB to dock Santiago and not even buy time with Bauer, whose alleged offense is far more serious?” Rosenthal asked. “What exactly would Manfred’s trepidation be here?”

I’m still a little too trepiditious to ask. A baseball commissioner who’s already threatening to set records for terrible looks took two days to do what he had to do this time. “Terrible” isn’t the word for that look.

Beyond mere misogyny

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Trevor Bauer

Somehow it was easier on the insides when Trevor Bauer was a mere misogynist.

Before Trevor Bauer signed with the Dodgers in February, there were signs enough that the Mets might bring him aboard. And alarms enough that Bauer’s penchant for social media misogyny might require extraordinary pre-emptive strikes to contain potential fallout.

That was a month after the Mets fired general manager Jared Porter over sexual texts and images he sent a female reporter while working for the Cubs in 2016. And, around the time former Mets manager Mickey Callaway got suspended—and, eventually, fired as the Angels pitching coach—over several years’ unwanted pursuit of women around baseball.

A New York Post baseball writer, Joel Sherman, thought the last thing the Mets should consider under those circumstances was signing a pitcher to whom mere misogyny seemed second nature to anything longer than a single-year deal:

Bauer’s behavior does not rise near the malfeasance that Porter copped to and is alleged against Callaway. But Sandy Alderson hired both Porter and Callaway. He said in the aftermath of both disturbing revelations that had he known prior, he would not have hired Porter or Callaway. He knows what he knows about Bauer. Now. Today.

The Mets lost out to the Dodgers in the Bauer hunt. In letting Bauer become the Dodgers’ signing splash and migraine, the Mets may not have dodged just a bullet but a nuclear warhead.

On Monday, a 27-year-old woman filed a domestic violence restraining order against the 30-year-old righthander with pitching smarts to burn and a paleozoic personality to match. The Athletic‘s Brittany Ghiroli and Katie Strang got a look at the details inside the 67-page filing.

They almost make the sadomasochistic1963 novel whose title later became the name of a legendary rock band, The Velvet Underground, resemble The Enchanted Cottage. I can only imagine the sickenings to their stomachs Ghiroli and Strang felt.

“The alleged assaults described by the woman, which are extremely graphic in nature, happened during what she said began as consensual sexual encounters between the two,” Ghiroli and Strang wrote Wednesday.

According to the woman’s declaration attached to the request and obtained by The Athletic, she suffered injuries as a result of the second encounter, including two black eyes, a bloodied swollen lip, significant bruising and scratching to one side of her face. In the woman’s declaration, signed under penalty of perjury of California state laws, she said that her medical notes state that she had “significant head and facial trauma” and that there were signs of basilar skull fracture.

She also said that, in one of those incidents, while unconscious, Bauer penetrated her anally, which she did not consent to in advance.

“I agreed to have consensual sex; however, I did not agree or consent to what he did next,” she says. “I did not agree to be sexually assaulted.”

The two Athletic reporters reached out to Bauer’s side and got no comment beyond a statement from Bauer’s agent, Jon Fetterolf. The statement says, essentially, that Bauer and the woman began “a brief and wholly consensual sexual relationship” which she began, meeting twice, with Bauer leaving quietly but the two continuing to message in “friendly and flirtatious banter.”

But Fetterolf also acknowledged she sent Bauer photographs accompanied by a note that she sought medical treatment for a concussion, to which Bauer responded “with concern and confusion” while the woman was “neither angry nor accusatory.”

Mr. Bauer and [the woman] have not corresponded in over a month and have not seen each other in over six weeks. Her basis for filing a protection order is nonexistent, fraudulent, and deliberately omits key facts, information, and her own relevant communications. Any allegations that the pair’s encounters were not 100% consensual are baseless, defamatory, and will be refuted to the fullest extent of the law.

One of the lady’s own attorneys, Bryan Freedman, had a statement of his own to share with Ghiroli and Strang:

Without going into detail for the benefit of both my client and Mr. Bauer, the pictures evidencing the unconsented abuse do not lie. Any suggestion that she was not the victim of assault is not only false and defamatory but, in fact, perpetuates the abuse. Our client truly wants Mr. Bauer to engage in a medically appropriate therapeutic process where he can receive the treatment he needs to never act this way again.

“If he is willing to meaningfully participate in a process directed by appropriate professionals,” Freedman continued, “it will go a long way toward allowing her to feel safe and resolving this matter. But, regardless, she cannot allow this to happen unknowingly to anyone else.”

The woman accuses Bauer of choking her just enough into unconsciousness. She said in the filing that she awoke disoriented but also to him trying to have rough anal sex with her, “which I had never communicated that I wanted, nor did I consent,” and that the morning after he made a little light of the entire thing before he left an hour later.

The pair continued messaging each other, though. They met again in mid-May. That time, the woman’s filing says, instead of trying a little rough sex after choking her unconscious Bauer basically beat her head in for her—and, after she was fully conscious, told her she was safe and he “would never do those things to you if it wasn’t sexually.”

“As part of the request to the court,” Ghiroli and Strang wrote, “the woman also provided text messages and screenshots of voicemails she said Bauer sent to her inquiring about her well being and checking in with her to see what he could do; in one message, Bauer offers to deliver groceries to her.” What a guy.

The filing also mentions the woman went for two medical exams off that second “encounter,” including “rapid CT scans” for face, neck, and brain. She also met San Diego police detectives, downplayed the whole thing as just “rough sex,” and didn’t drop Bauer’s name then for fear of public repercussion.

“I was afraid what Trevor would do if he found out,” Ghiroli and Strang quote her filing. “I remain afraid that Trevor will find me and hurt me for going to the hospital.” They also quote from a conversation between herself and Bauer under the Pasadena Police Department’s direction: “I said, ‘Thank you for acknowledging what you did to me.’ Trevor acknowledged it and asked how we could move forward and asked if he could still reach out.”

The Pasadena PD is still investigating. Another attorney for the lady, Marc Garelick, said in a statement he and his client both expect criminal action against Bauer. MLB is also investigating and may sanction Bauer under the sport’s domestic violence policy.

“Let the balance between Bauer’s talent and his headaches be on the Dodgers’ heads,” I wrote when Bauer signed that three-year, $102 million deal with them. “The Dodgers may be deep enough that Bauer’s headaches wouldn’t make a huge impact, but they could leave the Dodgers with as many migraines off the field as their presence on it will leave for the rest the National League West, at minimum.”

If all Bauer gives the Dodgers now is a mere migraine, it would be a substantial improvement.

Wild rough sex is one thing. Forgive me if I have an impossible time believing that battering a woman like her head is a boxing gym speed bag, or giving her a back-door slider while she’s out cold, is any kind of erotic for either partner.

“One of the last text messages I sent him,” the lady’s filing said, “was, ‘I appreciate all of your offers to help, but the best way you can help me is to never do that to anyone else ever again.’ To this, Trevor responded, ‘I would never do anything to hurt anyone. That includes you’.”

What a guy.