After a less-than-stellar start to the 2025 Nippon Professional Baseball season, Trevor Bauer has been sent down to the minor leagues by the Yokohama DeNA BayStars.
Trevor Bauer has been dropped from the BayStars major-league squad. He can't be called up again until July 9th at the earliest.
After getting lifted last night, he shouted something at pitching coach Shinji Ohhara and left the dugout. https://t.co/V3uvN3wzUb pic.twitter.com/mvCsyKryPW
— Gaijin Baseball/外国人野球 (@GaijinBaseball) June 29, 2025
The 34-year-old made 15 appearances for the BayStars before the team decided to demote him, throwing 100 1/3 innings with a 4.13 ERA, 93 strikeouts and 34 walks. Despite being 33-35 and in fourth place in the Central League, the BayStars are just 5 1/2 games out of first place, trailing the Hanshin Tigers (40-31), Hiroshima Toyo Carp (35-33) and Yomiuri Giants (37-35).
On Saturday, Bauer went 5 1/3 innings against the Giants at Tokyo Dome, allowing five runs on seven hits and six walks. The BayStars lost the game 5-0. It was the fourth consecutive loss pinned on the oft-maligned pitcher, who has allowed 19 runs over his last 20 1/3 innings. His tough run in his return to Yokohama has left him searching for answers.
“I have elite swing-and-miss stuff, but every time I throw it in the zone, it gets hit. I try to throw more on the edges, I don’t get swings out of the zone, and I walk a lot of people. So then, as the game goes along, I try to throw more pitches in the zone so I don’t walk people, and then everything is a hit,” Bauer told Jason Coskrey of The Japan Times. “I don’t know what else to do … I’m completely lost, to be honest.”
Bauer’s control — or lack thereof — has cost him of late, as four of his six walks came in the first two innings of Saturday’s start against Yomiuri.
“A lot of them, I was trying to be on the edges of the zone. When I get too much of the plate, I give up a lot of hits, so I was trying to be on the edges. They did a good job of laying off some close pitches,” Bauer told The Japan Times after the game. “I thought my command actually got better as the game went along. Incidentally, I ended up giving up a lot more hits and a lot more runs as the game went along, too.”
A native of North Hollywood, California, Trevor Bauer is in his second stint with the BayStars after going 10-4 with a 2.76 ERA in 19 appearances with Yokohama in 2023, his first season pitching overseas. He struggled initially in Japan, and the club sent him down to the BayStars’ minor league club in the Eastern League, where he threw 26 innings over five appearances, striking out 30 and posting a 1.76 ERA before returning to the Central League.
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Bauer has made one appearance in the Eastern League this season, throwing five innings and allowing one run on three hits with seven strikeouts.
WBN NPB: https://worldbaseball.com/league/japan/
Photo: Trevor Bauer attends a news conference of Yokohama DeNA BayStars Friday, March 24, 2023, in Yokohama, near Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
