More allegations against Trevor Bauer as court hearing looms

Dodgers pitcher Trevor Bauer has a hearing in Los Angeles Superior Court beginning Monday related to the temporary restraining order filed against him on June 29. While there are ongoing investigations of assault both by the Pasadena police department and Major League Baseball, another allegation against Bauer has surfaced.

A woman in Ohio filed a restraining order against Bauer in June 2020, per reporting by Gus Garcia-Roberts and Molly Hensley-Clancy of the Washington Post:

A police report obtained by The Post shows that in 2017, during an incident at Bauer’s apartment, the Ohio woman attempted to show officers photos of injuries to her eyes that she said were caused by Bauer, who played for Cleveland at the time. The police arrested her for underage drinking. (The woman was an adult but not of legal drinking age; The Post is not specifying her age in order to not disclose identifying details.) There is no indication in the report of what, if anything, police did to investigate her allegations.

The Post also obtained copies of messages Bauer allegedly sent the woman, which her lawyers said prompted her to seek an order of protection. “I don’t feel like spending time in jail for killing someone,” reads one. “And that’s what would happen if I saw you again.”

Bauer, in his first public statements since the California restraining order was filed in June, denied the allegations from the Ohio woman, saying he and his representatives provided contradictory information to the newspaper.

“The Washington Post opted to ignore much of this information and to run a salacious story disseminating defamatory statements, false information, and baseless allegations from a woman who has not only harassed and physically assaulted me but who also attempted to extort me for millions of dollars last year in exchange for her not coming forward with false claims,” Bauer wrote in a tweet.

At the introductory press conference when the Dodgers signed Bauer to a three-year, $102 million contract, when asked about Bauer’s history of online harassment of women, Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said, “Hopefully over the last six-plus years, some trust and credibility has been built up in terms of the research we do on players and the vetting process that we go through in terms of talking to teammates of players we’re looking at, we’re talking to clubhouse guys, talking to trainers. We get as much information as we can on players.”

To The Washington Post, the Dodgers declined comment on whether they knew about the Ohio allegations.

Bauer has been on paid administrative leave by Major League Baseball since July 2, which has since been extended multiple times with the consent of the MLB Players Association. The latest extension came Thursday, through August 20.

That’s next Friday, by which the hearing for his temporary restraining order in California is expected to be completed.

To date, no criminal charges filed against Bauer. But per MLB’s joint domestic violence, sexual assault and child abuse policy, “A player may be subjected to disciplinary action for just cause by the commissioner for a violation of this policy in the absence of a conviction or a plea of guilty to a crime involving a covered act.”

Since the start of the policy in 2015, the seven previous times a player was placed on administrative leave under the policy all eventually were suspended by MLB. That includes Nationals infielder Starlin Castro, who was placed on administrative leave two weeks after Bauer this season and has already been suspended for 30 games.

Only one of those suspended players, Hector Olivera in 2016, was convicted of assault. Olivera, who was sentenced to 10 days in jail, was suspended 82 games by MLB. The seven previous in-season suspensions that involved administrative leave range from 20 games (Julio Urías in 2019) to 85 games (Odubel Herrera in 2019). The average suspension from this group is 59 games.