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.
