Controversial pitcher Trevor Bauer is taking another step in his quest to return to major league baseball by facing off against his former club.
Bauer has joined Asian Breeze, a traveling Japanese showcase team that is set to face the Los Angeles Dodgers on Sunday.
“Asian Breeze is extremely excited to announce that Trevor Bauer will be making his Asian Breeze debut on March 10th against the Los Angeles Dodgers organization,” the team said in a press release.
Bauer’s Asian Breeze squad is expected to take on Dodgers minor leaguers on a back field at the team’s spring training facility in Arizona, the L.A. Times reported.
The outlet added that Asian Breeze asked Bauer to pitch in some games in Arizona this spring and also allowed him to pick his opponents.
The New York Post’s Jon Heyman reported that Bauer, 33, is still trying to catch on with an MLB club for the coming 2024 season.
Bauer joined the Dodgers in 2021, signing a three-year, $102-million contract after winning the NL Cy Young Award in 2020 with the Cincinnati Reds.
He would only pitch 17 games for the Dodgers, however, after he was placed on administrative leave over allegations of sexual assault.
MLB would suspend Bauer for 324 games under the organization’s domestic violence policy in 2022, with the total later reduced to 194 after an arbitrator’s ruling. Days after his reinstatement, Bauer was released by the Dodgers and wasn’t signed by any MLB teams for the 2023 season.
Instead, he took his act to Japan, pitching for Nippon Professional Baseball’s Yokohama Bay Stars. He had a 10-4 record with a 2.76 ERA and 130 strikeouts in 130.2 innings pitched.
The Post reported that Bauer would be willing to take a minimum salary for another shot at the majors, with his agent, Jon Fetterolf, telling Heyman: “This isn’t about the money. Really, what he’s looking for is only a chance and an opportunity.
“I really feel like he’s done everything he can possibly do. This isn’t a guy charged with a crime. Yes, he was suspended, but he served his suspension.”
In 2021, the former all-star was accused by Lindsay Hill of taking things too far during a sexual encounter, allegedly punching her, choking her unconscious and sodomizing her without her consent.
Bauer has fervently denied the allegations and was never charged with a crime. The pair settled their respective defamation counterlawsuits in Oct. 2023.
He has always maintained that everything that happened between him and Hill was consensual and agreed upon, but says he no longer agrees to get into the rough stuff and hasn’t been seeking casual relationships.
“I’ve stopped having, like, casual sexual relationships,” the 32-year-old told Tomi Lahren during an interview on OutKick earlier his year. “I stopped agreeing to engage in rough sex acts.
“I’m looking for more people that add value to my life instead of something that I’m doing for a couple of hours on a night and then kind of forget about. I have other things that I’m focused on. I’d like to go back to work. I have a job, I run a business.
“Maybe I go back to dating at some point in the future, but (it’s) not something I’m focused on right now.”