{"id":45827,"date":"2018-04-25T13:27:07","date_gmt":"2018-04-25T17:27:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=45827"},"modified":"2020-08-06T13:27:17","modified_gmt":"2020-08-06T17:27:17","slug":"i-think-im-a-trevor-bauer-fan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=45827","title":{"rendered":"I think I\u2019m a Trevor Bauer fan"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think I hide the fact that when it comes to baseball, as much as I like the broad stroke enjoyment of the game such as visiting new ballparks, seeing a power hitter clobber a home run, and seeing a walk off victory, I take a tremendous enjoyment in the smallest things as well.\u00a0 Things that seem too small and insignificant that they hardly can be said to have occurred at all<\/a>, but when you know what to look for and see it happen and know what might or might not happen as a result, it\u2019s no less enjoyable.<\/span><\/p>\n

In other words, there\u2019s a tremendous amount of nerdy shit that I love about baseball that aren\u2019t the flashy, most attractive things about the game like home runs, strikeouts and throwing 100 miles per hour.\u00a0 That said, every now and then on the internet, there will be stories and articles about baseball that aren\u2019t talking about the Boston Red Sox\u2019s hot start, the home run potential of the New York Yankees, or the Los Angeles Angels of Orange County, Anaheim via Interstate 5 South\u2019s Shohei Ohtani, but something more intricate and harder to comprehend for the casual baseball fan, and these are the ones that tend to pique my interest, or at least be reliable for a good 10-minute read.\u00a0 Stories about like overlooked statistics and baseball skills, the intangible evidence of clubhouse chemistry, and some other real Moneyball<\/em> Doctor Manhattan kind of shit.<\/span><\/p>\n

Throughout the last few years, among the more interesting stories that have come and gone within the game of baseball, there\u2019s been a name that I\u2019d been seeing popping up sporadically: Trevor Bauer<\/strong>, a starting pitcher for the Cleveland Indians.\u00a0 I\u2019m pretty sure it started when he was in a game where he passively mimicked the batting stances<\/a> of several of his teammates in a game, which was noteworthy solely for the fact that he is an American League pitcher having some fun with his at-bats during Interleague playing in a National League ballpark.\u00a0 Baseball sometimes tends to take itself too seriously sometimes, so I could appreciate a guy like Bauer who manages to find some way to have some fun and bring some laughs into the glorified kids\u2019 game.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then there was this story about how a baseball player helped a baseball fan with her math homework<\/a> over Twitter, and lo and behold, it was Trevor Bauer.\u00a0 It was here did I learn that Bauer went to UCLA and was pretty much a pretty smart nerd, and if there were ever a type of player that I tend to favor, it\u2019s the brainy types that embrace knowledge and learning as opposed to just believing that god and their natural talent can carry their careers.\u00a0 And the fact that Bauer took the time to do something so simple and meaningful to a young fan, it\u2019s endearing in my opinion.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Because I\u2019m a baseball nerd, I love reading books about science-y stuff of the game.\u00a0 Books like Moneyball, The Extra 2%,<\/em> and Scorecasting<\/em> come immediately to mind, but in this one book called The Arm: Inside the Billion-Dollar Mystery of the Most Valuable Commodity in Sports<\/em>, it\u2019s basically a book about pitchers and their arms and why they\u2019re so valuable, but why they\u2019re so risky because of potential injury.\u00a0 Without giving anything away, there\u2019s chapter about how there\u2019s a training facility where<\/a> one of the methods they use are weighted baseballs, of varying weights above or below MLB regulation, in order to develop pitching muscles, rehab or make some mechanical changes.\u00a0 Surprising no one, Trevor Bauer is a regular of this facility, and apparently is capable of throwing a weighted baseball up to 105 mph.\u00a0 And contrary to the belief that throwing less reduces the risk of injury, Bauer is of the impression that throwing more often but regularly is how to risk it, and considering the fact that he\u2019s been good for 30+ starts in three straight years, the nerd might not be wrong.<\/span><\/p>\n

Bauer made it to the big time in 2016, when news of him slicing up the pinky finger<\/a> of his pitching hand while playing around with a drone became national news, because it happened during the middle of the ALCS.\u00a0 But ever the gamer, Bauer insisted that it wouldn\u2019t affect his ability to pitch and took the hill regardless, but after bleeding all over baseballs and the pitching mound in Toronto, he was pulled before he could even complete a single inning.\u00a0 Despite the strain of losing the starter in the first inning, the Indians went on to win the game anyway, and they advanced to the World Series regardless.<\/span><\/p>\n

Unfortunately for Bauer, he was mostly ineffective during the World Series, and took losses in both of his starts, with a lot of criticism being flung his way for his off-field hobbies and compromising his pitching hand in the weeks leading up to the World Series.\u00a0 But far be it for anyone to be the fun police to what players do off the field, so I\u2019d wager a guy like Bauer couldn\u2019t give two shits about what anyone thinks about his love for drones, much like a guy like Joel Zumaya probably doesn\u2019t care that people think his Guitar Hero<\/em> obsession<\/a> cost his team a World Series.<\/span><\/p>\n

I think the seeds of fandom really came to full bloom this past off-season when Trevor Bauer was one of the handful of baseball players to go to salary arbitration with his team and win.\u00a0 Salary arbitration is a silly antiquated process where a player and the team disagree on what the player should be paid for the upcoming season, and then they put the decision into the hands of arbiters who listen to both sides why a guy should be paid what he thinks and what the team thinks what he should be paid.\u00a0 It\u2019s kind of an uncomfortable and invasive procedure that usually leads to sour grapes from one side regardless of the end decision.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the case of Trevor Bauer, he ultimately ended up beating the Cleveland Indians, and proved that he should be paid $6.5 million dollars instead of the $5.3M that the Indians wanted to pay, which is one of the more substantial differences in proposed salaries to go in favor of the player.\u00a0 However, ultimately $6.5M was more than Bauer was anticipating to make, so in a combined attempt to make a mockery of the arbitration system which he has been vocal about being against, as well as an opportunity for good will, he\u2019s taking a chunk of the salary overage, and running a campaign called \u201cThe 69 Days of Giving<\/a>;\u201d with the choice of numbers being very deliberate, in the most sophomoric of manners.<\/span><\/p>\n

The nerd is also a bro.\u00a0 Can\u2019t hate on that.<\/span><\/p>\n

So for 69 days, Bauer is donating $420.69 to various charities on a daily basis, with a final donation of $69,420.69 going to one particular charity that he\u2019s keeping secret presumably until then.\u00a0 But knowing Bauer, we probably know it\u2019s going to be something funny and\/or ironic, and\/or just plain noble.\u00a0 His justification is golden too, stating that if he donated a lump sum of $100k, it would be done, over and forgotten in a day, but stretching it out over the span of 69 days, it\u2019s news worthy, and helps spread the awareness for if anyone else wanted to get in on the charity.<\/span><\/p>\n

As is often the case early in seasons, when the weather isn\u2019t blazing hot and pitchers struggle with grip on the baseball, we get the usual array of implied cheating going on among the fraternity of pitchers; where everyone is doing it, but nobody talks about it.\u00a0 And this year\u2019s edition of \u201call the pitchers are cheating<\/a>\u201d articles done by major outlets, there\u2019s a brief take on it by none other than my new favorite player, Trevor Bauer, who talks about, scientifically, naturally, what effects pine tar has on pitcher grip and the revolutions it does to a thrown ball.<\/span><\/p>\n

I thought I was pretty well educated in shit like wOBA, WAR, FIP, SIERA and other sabermetric terminology that only nerds on the internet in their moms\u2019 basements<\/a>, but I guess I fell off the wagon before analysis got to the point where pitchers pitch RPMs were being measured.\u00a0 But leave it to an egghead like Trevor Bauer to not only be on top of it, to know exactly where he stacks up to average pitch RPM and how much more effective he could be if he ever chose to hop aboard the \u201ceveryone does it\u201d pine tar train.<\/span><\/p>\n

He\u2019s probably not wrong either, because in the grand scheme of pitching physics, more revolutions mean typically more movement, and more downward action to anything that is hit (ground balls), if they\u2019re not swinging through them.\u00a0 Pine tar, or any other foreign substance allows that much more of a tighter grip which leads to more RPM, and it\u2019s pretty crazy to see just how much difference just the smallest variable does.<\/span><\/p>\n

And finally, we\u2019ve got the sheer notion that Trevor Bauer is speaking out<\/a> about more things that in itself has become newsworthy.\u00a0 It should be pointed out that this particular article is written by ESPN\u2019s Jerry Crasnick, who also wrote The Arm book, and clearly has some sort of relationship or at least degree of favoritism towards Trevor Bauer.\u00a0 But as far as I\u2019m concerned, I\u2019m okay with it, because over the years, he\u2019s gotten my attention, and I\u2019m pleased to see a talented, albeit slightly unorthodox to baseball\u2019s stuffy traditions, nerdy kind of guy see his star rising as he reaches his peak.<\/span><\/p>\n

Needless to say, I think it\u2019s safe to say that I\u2019ve become a Trevor Bauer fan, and I hope that he continues to have a fruitful career and continues to make news in the most quirky and out-of-the-baseball-ordinary ways as time passes.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t think I hide the fact that when it comes to baseball, as much as I like the broad stroke enjoyment of the game such as visiting new ballparks, seeing a power hitter clobber a home run, and seeing a walk off victory, I take a tremendous enjoyment in the smallest things as well.\u00a0 … Continue reading I think I\u2019m a Trevor Bauer fan<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[62,79,76,52,124],"class_list":["post-45827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-baseball","tag-cashmoney","tag-geeks","tag-owned","tag-trolls"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45827"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45827\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45829,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45827\/revisions\/45829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}