During his postgame Zoom media session after his brilliant 7-0 / one-hit shutout against the Colorado Rockies at Dodger Stadium on Tuesday night, Dodgers right-hander Trevor Bauer was asked the inevitable question about the widespread reports that he was under investigation by Major League Baseball for allegedly doctoring baseballs with a foreign substance. The allegations were brought to light when Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic (subscription required) posted on Twitter that baseballs used by Bauer against the Oakland Athletics on April 7 at RingCentral Coliseum (formerly Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum) had been collected by umpires and sent to MLB for analysis to determine what, if any, foreign substance was on balls that Bauer had used. Bauer pulled no punches when he answered the question. Here is his reply verbatim:

“Gossip bloggers writing stuff and having no clue about the actual rule or actually knowing the rule, but intentionally writing something without going and investigating. I don’t know, I don’t know what the hell that report was about.

“Basically, so I can explain to everybody what the actual rule is, MLB is just collecting baseballs to do a study. Like, they’re not doing anything with them. No one’s under investigation or no one’s like… it’s just these gossip bloggers just out here writing stuff to try to throw water on my name or whatever, I don’t know. Just personal vendettas, I guess.”

Question: Did anyone at MLB reach out to you or did you reach out to them? There’s no communication at all?

“No, there wouldn’t be any communication because they’re not like … they’re just collecting baseballs from every single game and every single pitcher and just doing an internal study. Like, I don’t know why they would communicate with me, because nothing was different between my game and the baseballs they took from me and the baseballs they took from every other pitcher that game, and the baseballs they’ve taken from every other game during the season. Like, there’s literally no difference between any of that.

“So when you have somebody that intentionally comes out and writes something slanted… Like, I’m all for a clickbait headline, I get the benefit of that and all that stuff. But when you’re gonna sit there and write an article and like, not even go and like understand the rule or intentionally ignore the fact that you know the rule just so you can, you know, intentionally pile on someone for… that’s such a joke of an article. It’s such a, like… from someone who calls himself a journalist. It’s just a joke.”

Could it be that the reigning National League Cy Young Award winner is just exceptionally good at his craft as opposed to resorting to cheating, as Ken Rosenthal would have you believe?

Stay tuned. I don’t think we’ve heard the last of this “from someone who calls himself a journalist.”

Play Ball!

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