Tag Archives: Los Angeles Dodgers

Bauer wins . . . nothing much, really

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Trevor Bauer

Bauer in the shadows. He isn’t even close to being off the hook yet. Nor should he be.

Read very carefully. Under MLB’s formal domestic violence policy, commissioner Rob Manfred can still discipline Dodger pitcher Trevor Bauer. Even if a woman accusing him of taking consensual rough sex into non-consensual territory was denied a permanent restraining order Thursday. Even if no criminal charges end up being filed.

Bauer’s been on paid administrative leave since 2 July. The leave was extended yet again, with full agreement between MLB and the Major League Baseball Players Association, this time through 27 August. With Pasadena police still investigating—criminal charges remain a distinct possibility—and Manfred’s office doing likewise, it’s fair to assume Bauer won’t pitch again this season.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Dianna Gould-Saltman agreed that “injuries as shown in the photographs” the woman’s legal team provided of her aftermath from Bauer encounters “are terrible.” The judge went on: “If she set limits and he exceeded them, this case would’ve been clear. But she set limits without considering all the consequences, and respondent did not exceed limits that the petitioner set.”

I seem to remember the victim saying it was one thing to have a mutually brutal round of rough sex with Bauer but it was something else again for him to keep it up when she was out cold. Unless I’m very wrong, when you’re out cold or sound asleep you can’t exactly say “yes” to something, anything, competently or with knowledge. You don’t need to be a legal beagle to know that.

“At the moment,” tweeted Bill Shaikin of the Los Angeles Times, “MLB and police investigations continue, with focus not on whether Bauer should be restrained from contacting accuser going forward, but on whether previous conduct alleged by accuser merits criminal charges and/or MLB suspension.”

Sheryl Ring, an attorney who devotes a considerable amount of her time to watching and analysing baseball, writes that—pace his social media sycophancy crowing that he beat the rap and should be back on the mound post haste—the only thing Bauer really won Thursday was the right not to be blocked from contacting the lady in question in the future.

He’s not even close to being off the hook for what he did to her in the past. Yet.

Ring agrees the lady and her legal team tripped over themselves a few times during the hearings, particularly over the consent issue. “You can lose a case on an inaccurate statement in a sworn pleading, even on a collateral issue, and that clearly weighed heavily on the judge here,” she writes. “Finally, they elected not to have their expert witness testify on the issue of consent even after briefing the issue and winning that briefing, which I think was also a mistake.”

But Gould-Saltman also made a crucial mistake in her ruling, Ring continues:

Right after saying at the beginning of her ruling that future harm was not necessary to the issuance of a restraining order, she talked about how there was no need for a restraining order because there was no risk of future harm. She also, in my opinion, incorrectly applied the law of consent when it came to this line:

If she set limits and he exceeded them, this case would’ve been clear. But she set limits without considering all the consequences, and respondent did not exceed limits that the petitioner set.

Given a phone call was played in which Bauer admitted to punching the petitioner whilst she was unconscious, what the court stated is an incorrect statement of the law. You cannot give consent to anything when unconscious. In my opinion, that’s reversible error and grounds for a potentially meritorious appeal.

If Gould-Saltman could rule the lady didn’t make her boundaries “clear,” perhaps the judge would like to explain how she was supposed to keep making them clear, or to stop Bauer from crossing the line further when she was in dreamland—when she was in dreamland in fact after Bauer choked her unconscious with her own hair—while he crossed that line.

One of the worst-kept secrets throughout this entire disgrace is that there may be no one in a Dodger uniform who wants Bauer back with the team no matter how well he pitched before 2 July. The Dodgers themselves have legal recourse to rid themselves of him.

The standard, uniform player’s contract includes 7(b)1: they can terminate Bauer’s deal if he “fail[s], refuse[s] or neglect[s] 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.”

Paragraph 7(b)1 isn’t exactly an obscure or a previously-unapplied contract clause. When pitcher Denny Neagle got caught soliciting a woman for oral sex in 2004, the Rockies invoked the clause to terminate his five-year, $51 million deal. (Neagle missed pitching in 2004 due to ligament and elbow injuries.)

The players association filed a grievance in that case and it was settled in due course with the Rockies paying about 7/8ths of Neagle’s 2004 salary. Neagle’s marriage ended over the incident; he signed a deal with Tampa Bay for 2005 but didn’t pitch because of elbow issues and subsequently retired.

The Dodgers stand on far more solid ground if they elect to terminate Bauer’s deal with them. If they want to invoke 7(b)1 and cite MLB’s domestic violence policy, all they have to do, as Ring points out, is ask MLB’s permission—and if it’s permission denied, the Dodgers can do it anyway.

A man who likes his sex on the rough side and a lady who wants it likewise from and with him are merely kinky, in politest possible terms. A man who’d choke her out cold, then take her from the rear and punch her between the legs, is beyond mere depravity.

“This is, by far, the most serious case yet for MLB of an alleged violator, and it’s not close,” Ring writes.

No other person was accused of multiple violations against multiple victims. No other case . . . had this much court evidence. No other alleged violator so dramatically attacked their accusers in the press, either. The longest suspensions ever meted out for violations of the domestic violence policy were to Sam Dyson (a full season) and Jose Torres (100 games); as horrifying as the allegations were in those cases, this is somehow worse than both of those cases, and it’s not close. Notably, in none of the other domestic violence cases were multiple orders of protection sought by multiple people against the same player.

The last alludes to the revelation from the Washington Post, last week, that an Ohio woman also sought a restraining order against Bauer in 2020. She, too, accused Bauer of punching and choking her without consent during sex. Some winner.

Bauer prevailed regarding the restraining order in California, Ring writes, “by arguing that he is so dangerous that a woman who agrees to have sex with him assumes the risk of being harmed when doing so. And he made a great spectacle of dragging through the mud the woman he admits to having punched whilst she was unconscious.” Some model citizen.

Ring may not be the only legal-minded, legal-oriented baseball analyst to think it’s not out of the question that Manfred might consider suspending Bauer for two years. Effectively, that would wipe him out as a Dodger, since his current deal has two more seasons to go.

Practically, it might end Bauer’s life as a major league pitcher, period. But that would assume no other team would even think about plighting its troth to a man for whom women are little more than playthings with targets on their lady parts. We’ve known only too well what happens when you [ass][u][me].

“The inconsistencies Bauer’s attorneys elicited from the accuser spoke to secondary and surrounding matters — how she reacted to the assault — and not at all to the assault itself,” writes Craig Calcaterra, formerly an NBC Sports baseball analyst now writing the newsletter Cup of Coffee.

The text messages show a person who is at turns confused, angry, sad, depressed, or desiring vengeance, but those are all understandable feelings for a person in her situation to have. What Bauer’s attorneys did not do at all was discredit the central claim that he assaulted her in horrible ways.

. . . [T]he central truth of this entire affair — the stuff that Major League Baseball will look to regarding Bauer’s behavior, irrespective of whether [criminal] 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.

Small wonder Brewers pitcher Brett Anderson could and did tweet, “Crazy to think that I could never get anyone out ever again and still feel better about my career than Trevor Bauer’s.” Indeed it is better to surrender six runs in three and a third innings than to be known for abusing women, violently or otherwise.

Max the Knife comes up aces

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Max Scherzer

Dodger fans asked Max the Knife for something he’d never had in his career before Wednesday night—a curtain call.

Nothing could spoil Max Scherzer’s mound premiere in a Dodger uniform Wednesday night. And it wasn’t for lack of trying by the Astros. Not even for lack of trying by one particularly brain dead Dodger fan down the right field line.

The Astros made a grand enough effort after Scherzer left the game following seven stellar innings and ten strikeouts marred only by a solo home run and an RBI single. They had to settle for losing by two runs instead of five.

The Dodger bullpen made a grand enough effort, too, letting the Astros pry three runs out of them including a two-run homer in the top of the ninth off Kenley Jansen before he finally struck out the side to end the 7-5 Dodger win without any further self-immolation.

The aforesaid meathead in the stands did his best to contribute to a potential overthrow, too. With two out in the top of the eighth, struggling Cody Bellinger playing right field, and Carlos Correa at the plate against his old buddy Joe Kelly, Correa on 1-0 lifted a long foul down the line. Bellinger had a running bead on the ball and a certain side-retiring catch ready and waiting.

Until he didn’t.

Bellinger jumped just enough to make the catch. Except that the idiot in a Mookie Betts jersey with a glove on his left meathook reached up to snatch the ball right before it would have landed in Bellinger’s glove. Some of the fans surrounding the jerk congratulated him. Others surrounding him looked as though they wanted to brain him.

Technically, the jerk didn’t quite cross the line into obvious fan interference. But you’d think even the most profit-hungering souvenir hunter would be smart enough to back down when the right fielder has a chance to end an inning with a catch just above the edge of the fence padding.

Instead of side retired, Correa got extra life against Kelly. He swung and missed for strike two immediately after the stolen foul out, fouled another off, then turned on a hanging slider and sent it almost halfway up the left field bleachers for the third Astro run of the night.

Dodger Stadium security removed the miscreant after Correa finished his trip around the bases. A few of the fans in the same region let the security people know just how happy they weren’t over that removal. They’d better be grateful that this wasn’t another World Series game.

They’d also better be grateful that not even jerks being jerks could spoil Scherzer’s first outing as a Dodger.

The packed, roaring house just gave Scherzer even more incentive to go forth and do what he tends to do best, refusing to let even Michael Brantley’s one-out bomb in the top of the first, or Kyle Tucker singling Yordan Alvarez home with two outs in the fourth keep him from his appointed ten punchouts thanks to an effective curve ball setting up the fastest fastballs he’s thrown all season.

“You live for this,” Max the Knife said after the game. “You live to pitch in front of 50,000 people going nuts.”

They went nuts enough that still-ailing Clayton Kershaw, his fellow three-time Cy Young Award winner, nudged Scherzer back out of the dugout after his outing ended to take what he’d never taken in his entire career to that point—a curtain call.

“With everything on the line, the way the crowd was, that was a high-adrenaline start, coming here,” the righthander continued. “Try not to do too much. Just pitch my game, go out there and do what I can do, and just try to navigate the lineup. The offense tonight went off.”

“Went off” was a polite way to put it. The Astros barely had time to let their opening 1-0 advantage sink in when Betts turned on Jake Odorizzi’s slider and sent it over the center field fence to lead the bottom of the first off. A walk, a swinging strikeout, and a Jose Altuve throwing error later, Will Smith turned on Odorizzi’s fastball and drove it into the right field bleachers.

One inning and one out after that, Betts struck again, hitting a 3-1 heater into the left field bleachers. An inning, two outs, and a walk after that, A.J. Pollock hit one over the left field fence and Odorizzi must have thought by then that he could have pulled an automatic pistol out of his pocket, fired toward the plate, and still watched the bullet travel out of the yard off the end of a Dodger bat.

The Astro righthander blamed poor mechanics since the All-Star break, but with a 4.95 ERA and a 5.06 fielding-independent pitching rate on the season you could almost wonder whether the Astros threw him up as a sacrificial lamb Wednesday night.

“My fastball has been flat,” Odorizzi said after the game. He could have said “flat-tened” and it wouldn’t have made a difference. “There are a lot of things I am working on between outings, but then I am reverting back to bad form.”

The bad news for the Dodgers was that such reversion threatened to ruin Jansen and them in the top of the ninth. He surrendered a leadoff single to Aledmys Diaz before Tucker sent a hanging cutter into the right field bullpen. Then Jansen re-horsed to strike Robel Garcia, Jason Castro, and pinch-hitter Meyers out swinging.

Nothing, though, could diminish Scherzer’s impact. Especially with the Dodgers in straits desperate enough in the starting pitching department. Walker Buehler and Julio Arias have had to hold fort while Kershaw’s forarm inflammation hasn’t subsided yet, and it’s already kept the lefthander out since early July.

Tony Gonsolin’s shoulder is inflamed likewise. Still-ailing Kansas City import Danny Duffy isn’t likely to be ready before September. And the execrable Trevor Bauer remains on administrative leave while MLB and the Pasadena police continue investigating sexual assault accusations against him.

The Dodgers hogged the headlines on trade deadline day when they swept in and snatched Scherzer (plus star infielder Trea Turner) from the Nationals and right out from under their downstate rival Padres’s noses. Now Scherzer had to live up to the headlines—just the way he forced himself to live up to the biggest noise of 2019 and pitch on nothing but fumes and will to keep the World Series-winning Nats in Game Seven just long enough to give them a chance to win it in the first place.

Manager Dave Roberts almost wasn’t worried. Almost. Buehler and Urias must have felt as though thousand-pound iron blocks were removed from both their shoulders after Scherzer’s evening’s work finished.

“From the moment I got to the ballpark, we got to the ballpark, you could just see that elevation, anticipation from our guys,” Roberts said post-game. “The buzz in the crowd from the first pitch, him taking the mound, donning the [Dodgers’ home uniform] for the first time—he delivered. He delivered. Just the intensity. It was so much fun. And it was just really cool to see the crowd smell it and want him to finish that seventh inning.”

“I mean, it’s Max Scherzer,” the Mookie Monster said post-game. “I think that kind of speaks for itself.” (In case you were curious, Betts had one hit—a double—in six lifetime plate appearances against Scherzer before they became teammates.)

For Scherzer, coming off the only mid-season trade of his distinguished career, and to the team he’d helped beat in the 2019 National League Division Series, the hardest part’s over. For now. “I’m a Dodger,” Max the Knife said. “It feels a lot more normal when you just go out there and pitch and win. Winning kind of cures everything.”

It might even get him the final home address of his career. Might.

If he keeps pitching the way he did Wednesday night, even at age 37, and nobody including Scherzer shouldn’t be shocked if the Dodgers decide to make it worth his while and his bank account to keep him in the family. At least until his arm finally decides to resign its commission a couple of years from now. Maybe with a couple of more World Series triumphs to its credit before he’s done.

Keep it in the stands, Astrogate protestors

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Dodger Stadium

This Dodger ball girl is not rushing to take out the trash—she’s disposing of an inflatable trash can thrown on the field Tuesday night when the Astros hit town. (USA Today photo.)

Dodger fans finally had their chance to let the Astros have it over Astrogate Tuesday night. Over the Astro Intelligence Agency very likely remaining in operation during the 2017 World Series. Over the hapless Rob Manfred forced to issue immunity to Astro player culprits in return for their spilling the deets—then having to walk back his temporary-insanity dismissal of the World Series trophy as a hunk of metal.

Over what Mike Fiers finally blew the whistle on about the Jeff Luhnow-era Astros’ systemic, illegal, off-field-based electronic cheating, opening the way to further exposure of Luhnow’s amoral results-before-people operating ways. Over the Astros’ failure to own up at the notorious spring 2020 presser before the pan-damn-ic shut spring training down and delayed what proved the 2020 irregular season.

Over owner Jim Crane putting his foot in his mouth repeatedly. (This didn’t impact the game; we won the World Series; I didn’t say it didn’t impact the game.) Over Astro players doing everything in their power not say flat-out that they and the organisation cheated.(We’re not going into details. Never mind how many details were exposed over almost three months preceding.)

Last year the pan-damn-ically mandated fan-less stands deprived one and all of letting the Astros have it live and in person. They had to settle as Dodger fans did for milling outside the ballparks, social distancing properly enough, but heckling, hollering, and banging when the visiting Astros’ team bus arrived for the games.

This year, different story. The returning fans began making up for lost time. The bad news is that no few of those fans took things a few steps too far. Maybe not as far as the Astros took high-tech sign stealing, but far enough.

For one thing, the Astro roster is whittled down to only five remaining members of the 2017 World Series roster. For another thing, it’s been demonstrated plausibly since that Astros second baseman Jose Altuve, the arguable face of the franchise, objected to the trash can bangings that sent the pilfered intelligence to the batter’s box while he was at the plate.

For a third, protesting fans have crossed the line too often from heckling, booing, and catcalling to throwing things on the field. Things from the harmless enough stuff such as inflatable play trash cans to honest-to-God real trash cans and other none-too-soft projectiles. Astros reliever Ryne Stanek swore that fans near the right field bullpen threw “basically full beers at people for a half an inning” when the game was two-thirds done.

Dodger fans Tuesday night threw down hollers of “cheaters,” rounds of expletives in English and Spanish, and rather impassioned booing when Dodger Stadium’s public address announcer threatened the sellout crowd with ejections for throwing things onto the field, possibly even including any foul balls or home runs the Astros hit into the seats.

Somewhere in the middle of the racket the Astros and the Dodgers played a baseball game. Somewhere in the middle of it, the Astros won, 3-0, despite Dodger starter Walker Buehler pitching six stout innings with only one run against him, courtesy of Michael Brantley’s RBI double in the third.

Somehow, another Astro relief pitcher, Blake Taylor, still thought it took “a special player” to wear an Astro uniform still bearing the taint of the 2017-2018 cheaters.

“If you’re not willing to withstand the criticism you’re gonna get at every stadium we walk into, you can’t handle it — it’s tough. It’s tough thing to ask a lot of guys to do,” he told reporters.

But the crew that we have right now, they’re all in on this. They know that they’re not the only ones going through this. Every single person in this clubhouse gets booed every time we walk on the field and just gets called “cheaters” and things like that. So at the end of the day we’re just one big family and we have each other’s backs, no matter what.

Even leading the American League West by five games, it isn’t always a thrill to be an Astro these days. I say again: Fair or not, the Astros will wear the Astrogate stain until the last member of that tainted 2017-18 team no longer wears the uniform. Even if it’s patent nonsense to hold the entire 2021 roster responsible for what Alex Bregman, Carlos Correa, Yuli Gurriel, and Lance McCullers, Jr. were part of in 2017 and couldn’t own up to in pre pan-damn-ic shutdown spring 2020.

(Why let Altuve off the hook? There also turned out to be not a shred of real evidence, after all, that Altuve wore any kind of wire device under his uniform, as suspected after he ducked the jersey shredding following his pennant-winning walkoff bomb in the 2019 American League Championship Series.)

I say again, further: Go ahead and make all the racket you want denouncing the Astros. Boo them if you must. Insult them if you must. Wear those Oscar the Grouch costumes if you wish. (The independent league St. Paul Saints couldn’t keep up with the demand for “Astro the Grouch” figurines playing recorded trash can bangs last year.) Hoist the inflatable trash cans, bang your plastic ones loud and long if you must, sing anything from “Secret Agent Man” to “The Spy Who Loved Me.”

But keep it in the stands and quit throwing things onto the field. Manfestly, Joe and Jane Jerk-fan, that makes you look at least as bad as the Astros made themselves look when they got exposed as illegal off-field-based electronic-and-algorithmic cheaters and then—given the chance to own up and man up—told the world the dog ate their homework.

Two champion Series finishers move on

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Max Scherzer

Max the Knife celebrates the World Series triumph he helped author with his on-fumes Game Seven start. Can he help the Dodgers go back to the Series?

The author of maybe the single most uplifting game in Nationals history is a Nat no more. The fellow with one blue and one brown eye who forced his way past a neck issue to keep the Nationals in line to win their first World Series has gone west.

That was hours after the Cubs finally said goodbye to the man who snapped into his mitt the final out of their first World Series win since the premieres of cellophane, the Geiger counter, and the Model T Ford.

Trade deadlines don’t often feature two or more signatures of two off-the-charts World Series champions changing addresses and wardrobes. When they’re men identified that tightly with their teams, even those with no rooting skin in their games can’t help thinking that the world just got knocked more out of order than it seemed going in.

This year’s Nats don’t have a staggering rise from the dead in them just yet, if at all. This year’s Cubs were bent on selling while the selling was good, with their National League Central chances this year anything but. “Go Cubs Go,” that rollicking anthem of the 2016 conquerors, now has another meaning.

Max Scherzer goes west for a better chance at a postseason return with the Dodgers. That was just moments, seemingly, after the entire world thought the splash-happy Padres had him all but loaded on the plane west. Ouch.

Anthony Rizzo goes east in a Yankee hope that a couple of heretofore missing lefthanded bats—they’d landed all-or-nothing portside slugger Joey Gallo from the Rangers just prior—might turn their season from somewhat lost to yet another shot at the Promised Land.

The Nats hope the package of prospects Scherzer and shortstop Trea Turner brought back from Los Angeles mean this season proves a hiccup on their way back to the races to come. The Cubs hope the pair Rizzo brought back from the Bronx means likewise, especially depending on what they can bring back in any deal for Rizzo’s partner in 2016 World Series crime, third baseman Kris Bryant.

But ending eras is never pleasant. And these two deals ended a pair of eras that’ll live as long as Washington and Chicago live. The Rizz speared Bryant’s herky-jerky on-the-move throw over to secure the Cubs’ World Series winner. Max the Knife’s empty-tank performance of sheer will kept the Nats alive enough to pull just enough lingering rabbits out of their hats to nail Game Seven in 2019.

Chicago and Washington won’t forget as long as those cities and those men live. The feeling is very mutual with the players involved.

“This city,” Rizzo said when the deal to the Yankees was done, “will be ingrained in my heart for the rest of my life.” Told he was as transformational a figure in Wrigley Field as anyone who ever wore a Cub uniform, Rizzo accepted the idea with no small pride. “That’s what matters most—leaving this place better than when I found it. I can say the mission was accomplished.”

Scherzer still wasn’t sure whether he’d still be a Nat after he pitched Thursday and threw three-hit, one-run ball at the Phillies, in a start that was as much a showcase for his renewed health (he’d missed a start with a triceps strain a few days earlier) as for the trading floor. But he wanted to think about what Washington meant to him from the moment he’d signed that mammoth seven-year deal due to expire after this season.

Anthony Rizzo

Nobody beats The Rizz: Clutching the final out of the Cubs’ 2016 World Series conquest.

First, there were the purely baseball considerations. “I signed a seven-year deal here and we won a World Series. That’s the first thing I said when I signed, that I was here to win. And we won. We won a World Series,” he said. “That’s a lifelong dream come true and something I’ll always be proud of with these guys here, to be part of a championship team, looking forward to reunions and stuff like that.”

Then, there came the familial and community considerations. Scherzer arrived childless in Washington with his college-sweetheart wife, Erica. They’re going to Los Angeles with two of Scherzer’s three Cy Young Awards and three daughters.

“I’ve watched my girls grow up here,” Max the Knife said. “Living in Virginia in the DMV area, I’ve really gotten used to it, all the politics that are going around. Being in the nation’s capital has been kind of fun as well, driving by the monuments every day . . . What can you say about the fans? That championship will always mean something to all of us and we’ll always have that flag.”

Parting with uber prospects Keibert Ruiz (catcher), Josiah gray (righthanded pitcher), Gerardo Carillo (righthanded pitcher), and Donovan Casey (outfielder) made sense only if the Dodgers were going to bring in something well above average. They brought in the best pitcher and the best position player—a still-young shortstop with a live bat—on the trading floor.

If the Dodgers want to close the brief distance between themselves and the uber-surprising Giants in this year’s National League West, they couldn’t have done better if they’d gone to the lab and mixed the right ingredients in the test tubes and beakers.

The Nats aren’t exactly leaving themselves helpless. They have have pushed the plunger on this year, but with Juan Soto around whom to remodel they’re looking at 2022 and beyond. Particularly with a returning Stephen Strasburg and who knows what off-season deals or signings to come.

Mostly, Scherzer relieves the pressures on the Dodger starting rotation, what with Dustin May lost for the season recovering from Tommy John surgery and Trevor Bauer persona non grata when all is said and done, in the wake of a police investigation into a couple of turns of rough sex crossing the line from consensual to downright unwanted sexual assault.

Whether he proves a rental or whether the Dodgers want to keep him for the rest of his baseball life remains to be seen. Don’t bet against the Dodgers deciding to make the latter happen.

The Yankees should be so lucky with Rizzo and Gallo. Yes, they sent out a lineup full of raw power until those deals, but that lineup lacked consistency and lefthanded hitting, the long-traditional fuel of that long-vaunted, long-legendary Yankee power.

Rizzo is the far more balanced hitter between the two newcomers as well as a multiple Gold Glover at third base. Gallo is so all-or-nothing despite his ability to work walks that he actually lets you imagine Mario Mendoza as a power hitter, but he is a solid defensive outfielder with range and arm enough to maybe make the Yankees forget about Brett Gardner at long enough last. Maybe.

So where was the pitching help the Yankees really needed? Why weren’t they all-in yet on someone like Scherzer? Despite his expressed preference for going west, the Yankees have been nothing if not able to persuade such determined men otherwise in the past.

Why not all-in on resurgent and available Cubs closer Craig Kimbrel? Especially with other teams trailing him including now the Rays, rumoured to be pondering a package of Kimbrel and Bryant coming aboard? Or resurgent and available reliever Daniel Hudson, the 2019 World Series finisher whom the Nats dealt to Seattle before the trading floor really began bristling with prize packages?

Or Jose Berrios, the formidable Twins starter whom the Blue Jays have snapped up for a pair of prospects and who’ll have him through the end of 2022 at minimum pending their ability to sign him longer-term from there?

The Yankees are still in the race, technically. The problem is, they’re three games plus behind the Athletics in the American League wild card picture and eight and a half games behind the Red Sox in the American League East.

And while Dodgers mastermind Andrew Friedman may be taking bows enough for Max the Knife and Trea Chic, Yankee general manager Brian Cashman—whose questionable at minimum construction of the current Yankee roster should take the heat Yankee fans heap upon hapless manager Aaron Boone—may yet have some very serious splainin’ to do.

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.