Should the Yankees Sign Trevor Bauer?
The New York Yankees are still looking for pitching, both for the rotation and the bullpen.
Outside of signing Marcus Stroman and trading for relievers Victor González and Caleb Ferguson, the offseason has been tough sledding for the Yankees on the pitching front. They already missed out on Japanese phenom Yoshinobu Yamamoto, saw trade target Corbin Burnes join a division rival instead, and aren't likely to sign Blake Snell or Jordan Montgomery. Meanwhile, they traded away Michael King and saw Luis Severino, Frankie Montas, Wandy Peralta, and Keynan Middleton leave in free agency.
There aren't many options left for the Bronx Bombers, but a talented - albeit disgraced - option is on the table.
Trevor Bauer, who has effectively been exiled from MLB, has shown desperation to sign with any team. On Tuesday, he appeared on the "This Past Weekend" podcast, and showed a willingness to play on a cheap deal with incentives.
"I just want to play. I'll play for the league minimum and earn my money based on incentives. I don't care, I just want to go play," Bauer said. "If you sign me, and something's not going right and you don't like the reaction, you can cut me."
The Yankees haven't been mentioned as a suitor for Bauer in an extremely slowly - if at all - developing market. However, even though they could use a talented pitcher on a risk-free deal, they should continue to stay as far away from Bauer as possible.
There's a reason why Bauer was banished to Nippon Professional Baseball after signing a record-setting deal with the Los Angeles Dodgers back in 2021: he received a massive suspension from MLB after being accused of sexual assault by at least four women. He was suspended for 324 games (two full seasons), a sentence that was reduced to 194 games but is nonetheless the longest non-permanent suspension in MLB history, surpassing the 162-game suspension to former Yankee Alex Rodriguez in 2014.
As such, Bauer hasn't stepped on a MLB mound since, and had just completed a one-year deal with the Yokohama BayStars. Even with a league-minimum deal, there's already no guarantee that he pitches well after not facing major league hitters for two whole seasons.
But that's the least of the Yankees' worries.
If they were to sign Bauer, it would be a PR nightmare that would significantly hurt the club's reputation, even after already dealing with the likes of Domingo Germán and Aroldis Chapman, both of whom served suspensions for domestic violence. Doing this in the famously huge media market of New York would only make the blowback even worse. Even if the Yankees cut Bauer because of the reaction, it's not worth even creating the reaction at all.
Another major red flag for signing Bauer would be a negative impact on the team's clubhouse. His reputation of making careless decisions and drawing unnecessary negative attention to himself have plagued him even before the sexual assault allegations were delivered. This included a notorious meltdown back in 2019 where he chucked a ball over the center field wall in response to being removed from a game, and injuring the pinky of his throwing hand during the 2016 playoffs when repairing a homemade drone; the latter incident could have possibly cost his team (Cleveland) a World Series title, as he lost both of his starts in the 2016 World Series, which saw Cleveland lose in seven games.
Finally, there's Bauer's relationship with current Yankee ace Gerrit Cole, who was his teammate at UCLA. Although Bauer has claimed that there is no longer "beef" between the two, reports indicate that their differing personalities do not go together at all, and Bauer even accused Cole of doctoring baseballs back when the latter was on the Houston Astros. Considering that Cole has an opt-out of his contract in 2025, bringing in a player he has largely negative history with can strain his relationship with the team and convince him to use the opt-out, which of course is the last thing the Yankees want.
In the end, while Bauer is a talented pitcher available for cheap, the Yankees shouldn't bother pursuing him, as the headache he would bring to the team both on and off the field simply isn't worth it. As mentioned before, they already had enough of dealing with players like Germán and Chapman, and the backlash they would receive for bringing in Bauer would be much worse.
The Yankees do need pitching, but they should look elsewhere instead of dealing with Bauer.
