By Yours Truly
http://throneberryfields.com/2017/10/06/the-indians-version-of-trevor-time/A pitcher whose thing for drones almost cost the Indians a trip to last year’s World Series. A hitter
who sometimes seemed like the unwanted man, the subject of trade rumours almost from the
moment the Mets landed him in July 2016, until the Indians agreed to take his full salary on in a
waiver-period deal with the Mets in August.
Weren’t Trevor Bauer and Jay Bruce the least likely guys you thought would give the Indians the
first big leg up in their American League division series?
Once upon a time, Trevor Time meant it was time for the Padres to bring in their redoubtable
closer Trevor Hoffman. For the Indians, Trevor Time meant throttling the Baby Bombers and a
4-0 Game One shutout Thursday in which Bauer needed a little help from Andrew Miller and
Cody Allen after the no-no was broken in the top of the sixth.
They roasted Indians manager Terry Francona to a turn over his decision to send Bauer to the
mound instead of Corey Kluber for Game One. Bauer roasted those critics with a masterpiece
while Bruce involved himself in all the scoring the game would see.
A shutout in which Bauer left Aaron Judge, whose coming-out party in the wild card game was
about half the talk of the wild cards, looking like a big oaf with three strikeouts—two of them
on called third strikes. There’s probably nothing like humbling an MVP candidate to shoot a
pitcher’s confidence to the 102nd floor.
Francona’s thinking wasn’t half as crazy as the roasters wanted you to believe. Bauer’s perform-
ance just might have been, until you remember that he won four times during that staggering
22-game winning streak and realise he’s all but given up on old habits such as practically spanking
himself over the smallest things.
But the manager whose lifetime winning percentage as a skipper is second only to Joe McCarthy
simply didn’t want Kluber starting on short rest, a situation in which he’s less effective than on
regular rest.
Forced that way because of injuries to the Indian rotation last postseason, Kluber was half the
pitcher he usually is by Game Seven. And if the Yankees push this division series to a fifth game,
which is always possible, he wants his Cy Young Award candidate available to go on near-
regular rest.
So he sent Bauer to the mound against Sonny Gray, the Yankees’ non-waiver deadline acquisition,
in the Prog. And until Aaron Hicks whacked a one-out double off the left field wall in the sixth,
Bauer threatened to join Roy Halladay and Don Larsen as the only men to pitch postseason no-
hitters or better.
With his curve ball especially giving the Yankees fits, Bauer pitched himself into the Indians
record book. The previous team record for no-hit postseason innings in a game was four,
shared by a pair of Hall of Famers, Bob Feller (1948) and Early Wynn (1954).
He also pitched himself past Francona’s original game plan, into the beginning of a third turn
around the Yankee order, knowing as Francona did that the Indians have the bullpen bulls
who keep starters from blowing themselves out early enough and often enough.
About the only scare the Indians had was Miller. After Starlin Castro broke up the no-no, Francona
brought Miller in as Bauer exited to a thunderous ovation. Miller retired the side with a typical
strikeout on Greg Bird, and opened the seventh by doing likewise after a small battle to Todd
Frazier, but he walked Chase Headley and Brett Gardner around another strikeout (Hicks), and
Francona took no chances.
Mindful that Miller might not yet have been a hundred percent past the rhythmic rust of spending
part of September on the shelf with landing leg tendinitis, Francona lifted the towering lefthander
in favour of Allen, who dropped Judge’s fourth strikeout of the night on him for the side.
“He was mixing his pitches well,” said Judge about Bauer after the game. “He was using the
corners extremely well. You’ve got to tip your cap sometimes.”
“He takes a lot of pride in doing the work behind the scenes,” said Bruce of Bauer, who once
raised eyebrows over his unorthodox training routines—including bands and flexible bars—
and personality quirks, to the point where some feared the Indians wouldn’t do any better
than the Diamondbacks had in trying to figure him out.
“I know a lot of people don’t get to see that,” Bruce continued. “But there’s a preparation
and a focus, and he believes in what he’s doing. I think that’s one of the things that makes
him most successful.”
“I just think the pitcher you see now is a byproduct of all the things he’s thought about along
the way,” said Indians pitching coach Mickey Callaway after the game. “He is who he is today—
and did what he did tonight—because of the way he’s prepared himself since he was probably
ten years old. If Trevor had just listened to everything we wanted him to do, or any of his
pitching coaches wanted him to do, he wouldn’t be as good as he is today.”
And Bruce? He led off the bottom of the second with a double to left and scored while Roberto
Perez whacked into a double play. He ripped a fastball on the upper inside corner about six
rows into the right field seats with Edwin Encarnacion aboard in the bottom of the fourth. And
he sent Jose Ramirez home on a sacrifice fly in an inning later.
“Jay Bruce is the guy that really hurt him,”said Yankee manager Joe Girardi of Gray. “Besides
that, he pitched pretty well.” Gray thought the skipper was only half right. “I put everyone on
our side in a disadvantage,” he said. “I put us in a hole we weren’t able to climb out of.”
Bruce became an Indian in time to enjoy the bulk of that winning streak, admitting he was having
more fun in Cleveland than he’d had as he watched the hapless, injury-strafed Mets collapse
before his trade out of Queens.
There’s nothing like accounting for all the scoring in your postseason debut with your new team
to make a man feel even more like a big kid. Bruce has been to the dance before, with three
Reds teams, but not since 2013.
“I could not have fallen into a better situation,” Bruce said after the game. “When you get traded,
it’s usually to a team that’s a contender at the moment. For whatever reason, I ended up here.
I know it sounds cliche. But I just want to do my part, man. And this has been a blast so far.”
The Indians will take a few more blasts from their new toy right now. And a lot more curve balls
like the ones Bauer befuddled the Yankees with Thursday. They figure those will make others
beside the Yankees think they can’t hang with the Tribe. As if very many could right now.
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