Will Trevor Bauer Play In MLB Again? The Latest on His Potential Return

For the last few years, Trevor Bauer has been focused on getting back in the good graces of Major League Baseball. Bauer desperately wants to pitch in the Majors again, but an incident this week won’t help his cause. The former Cy Young winner was involved in a nasty car crash in Arizona Wednesday. TMZ reported that Bauer was not injured in the wreck and that he was not at fault. The driver of the other vehicle reportedly did not have to receive treatment either. Bauer’s black McLaren was significantly damaged, however.

Despite reportedly not being at fault in this incident, it’s another negative headline for the former Cy Young winner. Bauer, 35, has been accused of sexual assault by multiple women since 2021, which is also the last time he took the mound in MLB. He was initially suspended a record 324 games by violating MLB’s domestic violence policy, but that sentence was later reduced to 194 games by an independent arbitrator. Bauer was never charged criminally and has denied the allegations.

Bauer has been pitching in several different leagues in the past few years, including Nippon Professional Baseball, the Mexican Baseball League, and is currently in the Atlantic League of Professional Baseball.

Bauer has recently been pitching quite well for the Long Island Ducks of the Atlantic League. He threw a seven-inning no-hitter against the Lancaster Stormers on April 26, and then set a Ducks franchise record for 15 strikeouts over eight innings against the Gastonia Ghost Peppers on May 12. He is currently on the injured list for back spasms.

Despite the success, no teams in Major League Baseball appear interested in signing Bauer. Bauer believes he is being blackballed by MLB.

“I’ve offered to play for free. I’ve offered to go to the minor leagues. I’ve offered to literally donate my entire salary back to the team’s foundation, to play literally for zero dollars,” Bauer said on Dan Dakich’s “Don’t @ Me” podcast in late April. “I’ve offered to give up control of my social media if that’s what the problem is. I’ve offered to not make content. I’ve offered to do, really, whatever.

“It just doesn’t feel like anything that I do is going to be sufficient,” Bauer added. “No matter how well I pitch or what I say or don’t say or whatever.”

Bauer says that he has come close to signing with different MLB teams in recent years, but something always goes awry at the last minute.

“I don’t know exactly what goes on behind the scenes [in MLB], but I have my suspicions,” Bauer said on the podcast. “All I know is what the pattern is. I can’t tell you how many different times and teams we’ve talked to where the front office is on board [with signing me], the players are on board. We’ve talked to PR. They’re on board. We talked to ownership. They’re on board. We’ve just got to get final approval. Keep your phone on, we’ll call you. Then, nothing happens for two or three days. And we get a call back with them saying, ‘Hey, we can’t really talk about this but, sorry, it’s not going to work out.’ When that pattern happens over multiple different organizations, over multiple different years … people can think what they want to think about it. I think what I think about it.”

Bauer played for the Arizona Diamondbacks, the Cleveland Indians, the Cincinnati Reds, and the LA Dodgers during a 10-year MLB career. His top season came in 2020 with the Reds when he won the National League Cy Young Award.