Cleveland Indians spring training 2015 Game 2: Day 15

Cleveland Indians' starting pitcher Trevor Bauer, carrying his Bauer Blade shoulder tube to the tunes of the military band before the game, heads to the Indians dugout after warming up with pitching coach Mickey Callaway, right, and catcher Yan Gomes before Thursday's game against the Cincinnati Reds at Goodyear Ballpark.

(Chuck Crow)

GOODYEAR, Ariz. -- Some of Trevor Bauer has rubbed off.

Not a lot. Not the blue wig he modeled last week. That's a Duke thing.

Not the interest in drone construction. MLB put an end to Bauer's drone fly-overs after just a few takeoffs and touchdowns.

Good morning twitter. Game day! Let's go duke! @dukeblueplanet pic.twitter.com/Z78JeSfZ9x — Trevor Bauer (@BauerOutage) February 25, 2015

Danny Salazar has adopted Bauer's shoulder tube training. Pitchers, mostly minor leaguers but also some of Bauer's big-league teammates, have implemented weighted, colored balls into their throwing programs.

He could tell you what that's all about. And he wouldn't even have to kill you. The explanation, though, might. Suffice to say they can be used for velocity training, command, rehab, myriad things. Bauer cites "warmup and health" as his reasons.

"Trevor going out and searching (for information) and us being aware of what he's researching has made us a better organization," said Indians pitching coach Mickey Callaway.

Bauer finds information so empowering and the dearth of it almost unnerving, the Indians don't dare take a hard-line approach to reeling him in. But let's just say if he did less analyzing and data crunching no one would rush in to stop him either.

After a season that was better than his 5-8 record, Bauer still made all the usual stops to gather outside input with one emphasis on improving his two-seam fastball.

Callaway joined him on one of those stops, Seattle, where Bauer worked with Kyle Boddy and Driveline Baseball.

"One of the main (focuses) was the two seam ... laminar flow, turbulent flow, a lot of physics stuff, trying to get the two-seam to move the correct way," Bauer said Thursday after three innings of work against the Reds. "All the places I go have something very unique to offer."

One off-season stop is for digitizing his mechanics. Seattle was about the axis rotation on his two-seamer. Bauer added some sports psychology work to help him on the mound after a season in which his first-inning ERA ballooned to 5.54.

"It's hard to pinpoint but sometimes it's better to establish your fastball and best secondary pitch and not show them that much so early," Callaway said when asked if Bauer were experimenting with too many different pitches in the first inning.

"We saw that with (Corey) Kluber. One game (Kluber) didn't throw a breaking ball until the ninth hitter of the game. So he established that fastball. Sometimes that's what happened to Trevor."

Bauer is more comfortable in this camp, not just because he can work on pitches without fear of losing a rotation spot. The pitcher the Indians saw after the December 2012 trade was more immersed in his mechanics than focusing on his command. Of course, Bauer believed (and still does) that mechanics leads directly to command.

"Long toss and warm up, that's what everybody knows me for, more so than anything I do on the field," Bauer said, smiling. "(It's) definitely nice (to focus) on commanding the ball and the things that are going to actually help get people out. At the end of the day, that's what I'm paid to do."

There is that. Per STATS LLC, Bauer had the ninth-worst run support in the AL among the 61 pitchers who faced 500 batters or more. Better luck, and improved command of his pitches and his focus, especially in early innings, would further establish his place in the rotation.

The Indians have preached command for two years now, Callaway half joking that the word "wasn't in (Bauer's) vocabulary," so intent was the right-hander on perfecting his mechanics.

"I think he's situated to have a really good year," said manager Terry Francona. "He's still learning. Even when we hear him being interviewed ... or when we talk to him ... he's understanding a lot of what's important about pitching."

Give or take the occasional pop-up discussion of laminar flow vs. turbulent flow.