Trevor Bauer, who signed a contract with the Yokohama Baystars, is evaluated as a unique case in terms of popularity, skill, and annual salary among former Japanese professional baseball (NPB) mercenary pitchers.
This is because he is an incumbent pitcher who won the Cy Young Award. Bauer won the 2020 National League Cy Young Award while with the Cincinnati Reds. He won the honor of the best pitcher with a 5-4 record, 1.73 earned run average, and 100 strikeouts in 11 games that year, which was a 60-game shortened season.
Bauer, who became a free agent that winter and hit the jackpot of $102 million in 3 years and wore a LA Dodgers uniform the following year, even before that incident, threw 107⅔ innings in 17 games with 8 wins and 5 losses, an average ERA of 2.59, and 137 strikeouts. and continued his Cy Young-level skills.
However, Bauer is not the first Cy Young pitcher to play in the NPB. Don Newcomb, the first Cy Young winner in 1956, played for the Chunichi Dragons in 1962. However, after leaving the major leagues at the end of 1960, Newcomb joined Chunichi as a fielder and has a different personality from Bauer. Newcombe played mostly as an outfielder and first baseman for the year, and pitched in just one game. In 81 games, he posted a batting average of 0.262, 12 home runs, and 43 RBIs토토사이트. Originally, Newcomb was a pitcher with excellent batting skills in the major leagues. He hit seven home runs in 1955, and had a career batting average of .268 with 15 home runs and 109 RBI.
Bauer signed a one-year contract with Yokohama. Foreign media report that it is a condition of an annual salary of 3 million dollars and an incentive of 1 million dollars. That’s a pretty high salary for a foreign player debuting in NPB. Raul Alcantara, who returned to the Doosan Bears, played an active role as the best pitcher in the KBO with 20 wins and 2 losses, an average ERA of 2.54, and 182 strikeouts in 2020.
However, Bauer had an annual salary of $32 million this year, the final season of his three-year contract with the Dodgers. Among them, he receives 22.5 million dollars intact, excluding the 194 game suspension period imposed by the Major League Secretariat. In other words, the United States and Japan combined earn up to 26.5 million dollars (approximately 34.4 billion won). There was no NPB player who took such an astronomical ransom.
The last time Bauer was on the mound was on June 29, 2021, so it was a year and a half ago. However, at the initiation ceremony on the 24th, he said, “I am ready to throw by mid-April. I have trained hard for the past year and a half. I have strengthened my muscles and trained a lot in pitching. I have never rested. It was a time for improvement. I’ve become much stronger. I’ve never been this powerful.”
As for the reason for wearing the number 96, he said, “My goal this year is to strike out more than 200 and keep my fastball average velocity at 96 mph. So I chose the number 96.” Bauer’s most recent fastball average velocity was 93.1 mph, and he never averaged 96 mph.
He also clearly stated his goal: “First of all, I want to help the team win. It means I have to throw well. I will help my teammates and learn from them. As far as I know, I will tell you everything.”
As he revealed himself, if his stamina and skills are better than before, he should be seen as a candidate for the Sawamura Award, NPB’s Sailor Award. However, he insisted on ‘innocent’ about the incident at his initiation ceremony. I don’t know if Yokohama believed in this and brought it, but it seems clear that they believe in their ability.