Another day, another Trevor Bauer Twitter spat with a could’ve-been Mets teammate.
Bauer and pitcher Marcus Stroman traded jabs on Twitter Sunday, shortly after Bauer — who notably dissed the Mets to sign a three-year, $102 million deal with the Dodgers that contains opt-outs after each of the first two seasons — got into it with Mets hurler Noah Syndergaard on the social media platform.
On a thread where fans were highlighting Bauer’s political beliefs, with the reigning NL Cy Young winner responding that it was “extremely unfair to call someone racist with absolutely no basis to do so on,” Stroman chimed in with a single “thinking” emoji.
Bauer didn’t take too kindly to that.
“Instead of subtweeting me constantly you could just come out and say you dislike me,” Bauer wrote to Stroman. “Speak up homie. We’re both men. We can handle it.”
It may not have been a subtweet, considering Bauer was tagged in the thread, but Stroman evidently struck a nerve with the 30-year-old. Stroman also contributed to the thread, writing, “Disrespecting minorities and women should never be tolerated.”
Dating back to his days with the Indians from 2013-19, Bauer has had a history of problematic interactions on social media — which he was heavily questioned about during his introductory news conference at Dodger Stadium on Feb. 11.
During Bauer’s fifth season in Cleveland in 2017, a fan tweeted at him asking if he was “okay with racist caricatures for all races or just native Americans?” It was an apparent reference to the team’s controversial name and Chief Wahoo logo.
“I haven’t met a single Native American yet who thinks it’s racist. Shut up,” he responded.
The Indians name has been protested by various Native American groups for years. In 2018, the team retired the Chief Wahoo logo and announced last December that it had plans to change its name after the 2021 season.
There have been two high-profile incidents in which Bauer and his 423,000-plus Twitter followers have gone after women following exchanges with him on the platform. In January 2019, a Texas State University student called the pitcher her “new least favorite person in all of sports” after he trash-talked Astros infielder Alex Bregman, who she said is one of her favorite players.
Bauer and the student exchanged shots at one another, which included the 2020 NL ERA leader digging up an old tweet of her drinking prior to her 21st birthday and shaming her for it. Bauer continued to tag in her tweets over the next couple days even after she stopped responding to him.
The student later told USA Today that many of his followers piled on with hateful comments directed toward her long after their spat ended.
“I have cried daily and called my family crying because the first 12-24 hours or so I was getting a lot of hate,” she told USA Today. “When I said I felt harassed, he continued to tweet things like this claiming that I was responding to him because, ‘I like him.’ ”
Bauer later said he would “wield the responsibility of my public platform more responsibly in the future” and claimed he does not encourage his fans to “attack, insult or harass anyone on any social media platform, or in real life.”
Last August, a similar incident occurred between Bauer and a New York Daily News reporter. The reporter took a screenshot of one of Bauer’s tweets about his behind-the-scenes video blog of last year’s pandemic-shortened season and insensitively wrote, “When you’re definitely worried about the health and safety of your teammates.”
“When you’re definitely not terrible at your job or desperate for someone to notice you,” Bauer responded to the reporter. “Here, let me send some more followers your way. Have a wonderful day!!”
During his Dodgers news conference, Bauer neglected to comment specifically on his interactions with either woman when asked about them directly.
“Everyone makes mistakes in the past,” he said. “I try to learn from them as quickly as I possibly can. I try to understand other peoples’ viewpoint on things and be better in the future.”
