MLB announced on Friday that Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Trevor Bauer has been suspended for 324 games, the equivalent of two full seasons, the most severe sentence ever given down under MLB’s policy against domestic abuse.
Bauer immediately issued a statement indicating his intention to appeal the ban, making him the first MLB player to do so.
It said, “I deny committing any violation of the league’s domestic violence and sexual assault policy,” according to a statement from Bauer. “I plan to win my appeal against this decision. Throughout this process, my agents and I have maintained the utmost secrecy.”
During two separate meetings in April and May of last year, Bauer, 31, was accused by a San Diego woman of sexual assault and sought a restraining order against him. Neither the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office nor an L.A. court granted the lady a permanent restraining order, and the District Attorney’s Office refused to bring criminal charges against her in February. Other women have claimed that they were attacked by Bauer, and the MLB has the discretionary authority to punish players without a criminal conviction.
The Washington Post featured an interview with a lady from Columbus, Ohio, who said that the pitcher choked her unconscious hundreds of times during their years-long sexual connection. She is the third known accuser of sexual assault against Bauer. ” Earlier this month, The New York Post reported that she had spoken to the MLB as part of its enquiry into the behaviour of Bauer. On his social media platforms, Bauer vehemently refuted the accusations.
After winning the National League Cy Young Award during the COVID-19-shortened 2020 season, Bauer signed a three-year, $102 million deal with the Dodgers in February 2021. He was placed on administrative leave for the last 81 regular-season games, as well as the first 18 games of the 2022 season. He won’t be able to use any of his already served time towards his upcoming 324-game ban, which doesn’t begin until Friday.
If the appeal is successful, the punishment would run until the last game of the Dodgers’ three-year deal with Bauer in 2024. In 2022, the Dodgers would save $28 million, and in 2023, they would save the whole $32 million remaining on his deal. Even though a grievance hearing is proceeding, Bauer has been put on the restricted list and cannot be near the team. Until the completion of Bauer’s ban, the Dodgers cannot release him.
“According to the provisions of the Policy, the Commissioner’s Office will not publish any additional remarks at this point in time,” MLB said in a brief statement after announcing the ban without elaborating on its findings.
The Dodgers, who take on the Detroit Tigers at Dodger Stadium this weekend, issued this statement:
“We learned today that MLB’s investigation into charges against Trevor Bauer is complete, and the Commissioner has reached a decision on future disciplinary action against the pitcher. As a team, the Dodgers take any and all complaints of domestic violence or sexual assault very seriously. As a result of our complete cooperation with MLB’s enquiry, we fully support MLB’s Joint Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault, and Child Abuse Policy and the Commissioner’s enforcement of the Policy. The judgement of the Commissioner may be appealed, since we are aware of Trevor’s legal rights. As a result, we won’t make any additional comments until the whole process has been completed.”
Last year, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred announced a provision that allows him to ban players for “just cause” if he deems it necessary. Bauer is the 16th player to be punished since then. Before Felipe Vazquez’s prison term for sexual assault of a 13-year-old girl, the previous bans varied from 15 to 162 games and were the result of agreements in which players surrendered their right to appeal.
Last year, Bauer’s last start came on June 28. An assault complaint was filed the next day by a then 27-year-old woman against Bauer, alleging that he attacked her during two separate sexual encounters in April and May of this year at his residence in Pasadena, California. The lady, whose identity has been withheld by ESPN, said in her statement that Bauer repeatedly strangled her to unconsciousness, clawed and punched her all over her body, then sodomised her without her permission, leaving her with injuries serious enough to need a trip to the hospital.
To far, Jon Fetterolf and Rachel Luba, Bauer’s lawyers, have disputed all of the allegations, calling them “fraudulent” and “baseless.”
During the course of the enquiry, Bauer was first put on administrative leave, which allows him to receive his full salary but preventing him from seeing any major league facilities. This was first implemented on July 2. Following an enquiry into Bauer, the Dodgers decided it was not “proper” to have a bobblehead night for him and pulled his items from their shops.
A judge in Los Angeles Superior Court dissolved the temporary restraining order on Aug. 19 after a four-day hearing, ruling that Bauer did not pose a continuing threat to the woman and that her injuries were not the result of anything she verbally objected to before or during the encounter, pointing to texts from the woman in which she requested to be choked out.
According to the court, “As can be seen by looking at the photos, the injuries are horrific. However, the case would have been apparent had she established boundaries and he went beyond them. In the end, she established boundaries without fully contemplating the ramifications, and the reply did not go beyond those boundaries.”
Another lady, this one from Ohio, filed for a temporary restraining order against Bauer in June 2020 and accused him of abuse only days before the hearing began. According to the story, the lady cancelled the purchase six weeks later when Bauer’s lawyers threatened legal action. Images of purported injuries and threatening comments were featured in the New York Post report, including one in which Bauer allegedly wrote: “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in prison for murdering someone. It would be like that if I ran across you again.”
According to Bauer’s legal team, the woman’s claims of physical abuse were “categorically untrue,” and the authenticity of the images and communications in issue was called into doubt.
It took the L.A. County District Attorney’s Office five months to decide not to file criminal charges against Bauer, after Pasadena Police Department closed its investigation of the San Diego woman’s claims against Bauer on Aug. 27. First sexual encounter on April 22 and second sexual encounter on May 16 were investigated by the District Attorney’s Office and charges of assault by methods likely to cause serious bodily damage and sodomy of an unconscious person were ruled out.
According to the District Attorney’s Office, “after a careful assessment of all the available evidence, including the civil restraining order processes, witness testimonies, and the physical evidence, the People are unable to establish the relevant allegations beyond a reasonable doubt”
One of the first things I did was to put up a seven-minute YouTube video detailing my version of events, and at one point I said: “I did not strike this lady in the face with my fist. I didn’t hit her in the crotch. Never once did I pick at her skin. To the best of my knowledge, I never had anal intercourse with her or otherwise sodomised her. Even though we had consenting hard sex, I never abused her in the ways she alleges, and we never engaged in any of the unsettling behaviour she describes.”
As part of her domestic violence restraining order declaration, the woman claimed she woke up the morning after the second sexual encounter with two black eyes, a swollen jaw and cheek bones, dark red scratches on the right side of her face, bruised gums, a lump on the side of her head, a split upper lip, black bruising over the top of her vagina, and multiple bruises on the right butt cheek from the second encounter.
Deadspin and The Athletic have been sued for defamation over the past two months by Bauer’s legal team, who claim that the media outlets knowingly published false information in their coverage of the sexual assault allegations, and that The Athletic led a “campaign to maliciously target and harass” Bauer.
According to a court filing, the Pasadena Police Department was subpoenaed by Bauer’s attorneys for the San Diego woman’s phone records because “the requested materials will further reveal Petitioner’s plan to ruin Respondent’s reputation and career and to earn a large paycheck by making false and misleading allegations”
To her credit, Gould-Saltman rejected Bauer’s attorneys’ request to see the records of the phone calls in an April 4 hearing, finding that they had not made the proper filings and that she would have been sceptical of any argument they made that having access to them would help them prove that Bauer had been deceived and should be held liable for their legal fees.
Bauer’s lawyers sued the lady in the Central District of California on Monday for slander and tortious interference. She allegedly “fabricated allegations of sexual assault,” “pursued bogus legal proceedings,” “made false and malicious statements,” “generated a media frenzy on the basis of her lies,” and “extracted millions of dollars” in order to “destroy” Bauer’s reputation, “garner attention for herself,” and “extract millions of dollars”