Dodgers Rumors: Industry Exec Questions if Teams Will Sign Trevor Bauer
The Dodgers are currently on the hook to pay Trevor Bauer $22.5 million this year. That was going to be true whether they decided to keep him or, as they ultimately decided and announced on Friday, cut ties with him.
Los Angeles now has a week to try to trade Bauer, a very unlikely proposition and their only chance to save a significant amount of the money they owe him. More likely, they'll place him on unconditional release waivers, where it's even less likely anyone will bite on his, as that would let L.A. off the hook entirely and put Bauer's entire $22.5 million salary in the hands of his new team.
Most likely, Bauer will clear waivers and become a free agent, at which point any team can sign him for just the league minimum. In that case, Los Angeles would save that $720,000 his new team is paying him, but they'd still be on the hook for the remaining $21.78 million or so.
According to Alden Gonzalez of ESPN, though, even those small savings might not be coming L.A.'s way, because Bauer might be untouchable.
The Dodgers will be on the hook for $22.5 million of Bauer's 2023 salary but will save $720,000 if another team signs him for the minimum. And now the predominant question is: Will any team do it?
The industry's perspective, if it can be summarized with one sentence: Unlikely, but not impossible. ...
ESPN surveyed about two-dozen agents and front-office executives over the past month in an effort to gauge Bauer's potential free agent market, and the answers didn't deviate much beyond that. The most common response landed closely with what a rival general manager plainly stated in a text message... "I don't expect anyone will sign him," the GM wrote.
As Gonzalez notes later in the article, it just takes one team, and a pitcher of Bauer's caliber and track record would have to be enticing to teams looking for starting pitching. But it's striking to hear that the perception Bauer is too toxic to take on at this point, even for the league minimum, is so prevalent in baseball right now.
This will be the final chapter in the Bauer/Dodgers saga, but it will be a pretty intriguing one to watch.
