He added, “And the worst thing that can happen for my baseball goals is that someone like Forrest Whitley comes along, who is really physically talented and also really bright and cares a lot about his career, and then he is just better than I am.”

He played chess with his physics teacher at lunch

Whitley, 21, has barely pitched above Class AA. But at 6 feet 7 inches and 195 pounds, he is six inches taller than Bauer, weighs 10 pounds less and — as a prospect for the tech-savvy Houston Astros — has access to the most progressive player-development techniques in the game.

Conceivably, if the Indians fall out of the wild-card race, Bauer could soon be dealt to Houston. Or, perhaps, he could go to the Minnesota Twins, who lead the American League Central and whose chief baseball officer, Derek Falvey, is a former Cleveland executive and a student of pitching who knows Bauer well.

Regardless of where he ends up this season or beyond, the more organizations that embrace the curiosity that drives Bauer, the better his chances of fitting in. In high school in Southern California, he was too much of a jock for the nerds, and too much of a nerd for the jocks. He played chess with his physics teacher at lunch; if the game ended early, Bauer would ask for physics questions related to baseball.

Now, he spends much of his off-seasons with Kyle Boddy, a former Microsoft software developer who founded the Driveline Baseball training facility near Seattle.

“If Trevor can give away the secrets, and if he can talk about it openly, whether it’s people inside or outside of the pro game, the environment becomes more favorable to him,” Boddy said, adding later, “Instead of it becoming a combative thing, he has allies inside the game who really want to work with him. So it makes coming to work every day a lot less bad.”