Q: How much does your comfort level improve when people start to get used to your personality?

TB: “It’s been that way my entire career. When I went to high school, the freshman team hated me. They used to throw balls at me during BP and try to hit me in the back of the head while I was trying to take ground balls at shortstop to get better at fielding. The JV coach actively ridiculed me and made fun of me for carrying around the “penis pole” — my shoulder tube. The varsity coach hated me and actively tried to kick me off the team for going to the park at night and doing work outside of his practice, for missing summer games to go train, instead of playing meaningless summer games. So, for the first two years, everybody hated me and it was miserable.

“And then, by about two and a half, three years in, everyone realized — all the players and stuff realized — you know what? He’s not that bad. He’s just someone we have to get accustomed to. He has no ill intentions. He’s not out doing stuff that’s going to harm the team outside of the field. I’m not out drinking or partying. I’m not out getting arrested. I’m not out doing whatever. All I care about is getting better at baseball. That’s fine. He’s not actively trying to make my life worst, so we can accept him. Then, I went to college. I graduated high school early, went to college the first year the team hated me. I was different. No one liked me. Sophomore year, I was really good. One of the best pitchers in the nation and still the team didn’t really accept me. The upperclassmen didn’t really like me, but that team kind of came together and we went to the College World Series and it was kind of OK.

“By my junior year, again, two and a half, three years in, everyone was like, ‘Oh, this guy’s actually not bad. We can accept him. There’s nothing wrong with him.’ I go to pro ball and I bounce around from organization to organization. I’m in Triple-A. I’m in Double-A. I’m in the big leagues. Whatever. But, if you actually just look at the time that I’ve been consecutively in the big leagues, halfway through 2014, that’s half a year, then 2015 and 2016 — two and a half years. By 2017, all of a sudden, it’s like, ‘Oh, Bauer’s made this huge change. He’s such a much better teammate. Look at the progress he’s made.’ And, yeah, I have made progress. I’ve done a lot of work trying to find ways to interact with people and whatnot, but a lot of it is just it takes people a while to get used to me.

“There’s not very many people like me who just say what they think. It wouldn’t seem like a big problem, but it is. If I tell you what I think, then you take offense to it a lot of times, because it’s not exactly how you think or it’s not exactly what you want to hear or whatever. I’m not blindly allegiant to authority or to experience. I question stuff and I say things. I try to say the truth and be accurate with stuff. So, if I say, ‘I didn’t throw any changeups tonight, I threw mostly cutters.’ And then someone else says something else, now I’m in trouble for not toeing the company line. I’m just not going to say something that I don’t feel is accurate. So, it takes a while to get used to me, until you realize that I don’t care what you do.

“I don’t care. Go live your life. I’m not going to judge you for it. As long as you come to the field and you’re professional and you treat me as a professional and you go out there and do your job for team, I’m fine with it. That’s my definitely of a great teammate, not necessarily someone who sits there for four hours and plays cards every day or whatever. I don’t value that, because that’s time I want to be spending improving myself in some way, whether it’s baseball, whether it’s my off-field ideas and ventures, whether it’s just hobbies I enjoy that then keep me in a good mindset to do baseball. Ultimately, it all comes down to, for me, I want to be the best at baseball. So, everything that I do is suited towards being the best at baseball.

“If something’s not going to help me or it’s going to hold me back from being the best at baseball, I just cut it out of my life. That goes for relationships. It goes for TV shows. I don’t watch TV. I don’t waste my time with that. It goes for all sorts of different stuff. But, there’s not many people like that, so it takes a while to get used to me.”

Q: What’s the biggest misconception about Trevor Bauer?

TB: “I think a lot of people feel like I’m a bad person or I’m arrogant or I’m callous or something in that vein, because they see how I am online and they see how I am in news media and they see how I am in all the reports that come out of the clubhouse about how uncoachable I am or how difficult I am or whatever. So, I’d say that’s the biggest misconception. I’m not arrogant. I’m not callous. People that know me, whatever, I get along with them great. I’m very caring. I try to help my friends out. I go above and beyond. I try to enrich peoples’ lives. I do it in my own way — ‘69 Days of Giving’ is one of those things. I’m trying to involve as many people as possible and raise as much awareness for charity as possible. But, people are going to see the numbers and they’ll be like, ‘Oh, this kid’s immature. This kid thinks he’s smarter than everybody.’ But, ultimately, it’s like the best way to get as much involvement as possible is to make something provocative, something sexual, something kind of underhanded, because if I just give to charity, no one would care and no one would notice.

“People give to charity all the time and no one talks about it. But, as soon as you attach a sexual number to it or a marijuana number to it or some sort of reason why you’re doing it, now everybody cares and it’s a national story and it’s going to be a much bigger campaign because of it. But, if you believe I’m uncoachable and arrogant and smarter than everybody else and callous and whatever, you interpret that much different. If you believe all that stuff, you interpret the fact that I do weighted balls or whatever as much different. So, if people would just understand what I’ve been saying, that I only care about being better at baseball and that, if you get to know me and just treat me like a normal human being, I’m much different than what’s portrayed in the media.”

Q: To speak with this much confidence in the things you believe in, whether it’s fair or not, you needed to have a certain level of success for people to become more open-minded and listen to you. How good does it feel to have started to reach that point?

TB: “A couple things on that. One, anybody who plays in professional baseball has had a ton of success. So, it’s what you hold it relative to. Everybody online, ‘Oh, he’s never had an ERA below 4.00. He’s never,’ whatever, all this stuff. ‘He’s not successful.’ But, when I say I’m in the top 0.01 percent of people that play the game of my profession, it’s true. It just depends on what you hold it relative to. So, when I speak like this, or before when I would say something, it was coming from the success that I’ve had in baseball, because that’s how I view it. I’m playing professional baseball. I’m one of the best baseball players in the world. I’m at the top of my profession. But, other people don’t view it that way, so I come off as pompous or arrogant or aloof or whatever.

“But, now that I’ve won 17 games or whatever — a [stat] that doesn’t even matter. If you look at my numbers, my ERA was very similar. I just happened to have good run support and got on a roll. But, I did the same thing in the first half of 2016. But, because I happened to win 17 games and because we were on the 22-game win streak and because it finished the season [strong] instead of opening the season [strong], now people view things differently. And I realize that, but it’s just not something I’m willing to change — how I talk — because I haven’t posted a 3.00 ERA in the big leagues. Like, that shouldn’t determine how I speak or handle myself or whatever. But, it’s just how I come off. It is what it is.”

Q: But, now there’s more receptiveness to many of the things you’ve believed in…

TB: “Yeah, of course. Now, the reception is [better]. Just look at the narrative around me this spring, right? It’s so much different. One, it’s he developed a slider and did all this work in the offseason. Giving to charity. Much better in the clubhouse. Bauer knows what he’s talking about. The Infield Chatter piece came out about all my offseason work and giving back to kids. That got a lot of play. That’s all stuff that I’ve been doing for the past however many years. But now, because people look at it like, ‘Oh, he won 17 games. He’s figured it out, because he finished the season strong and he shoved in the postseason in one outing,’ or whatever. Now that people see that, now they start looking at all these things like, ‘Now I want to do that, because that leads to that.’ And, it’s just the same process. I haven’t changed anything. It’s not like now all of a sudden I’m working at my craft. The only thing that I’ve changed is my intent on controlling the narrative that surrounds me, so you can’t sit there and bash me non-stop in the media without me fighting back.”

Q: With the charity work, you said you felt like you had to do something provocative to get attention. Does that bother you?

TB: “It doesn’t bother me at all. It’s just the new age. It’s society right now. Provocative sells. Sex sells. Drama sells and trolling sells. That’s what’s newsy. So, you have to play the game that’s out there if you want to further your cause. I’ve talked to multiple people since I’ve launched, just in the last few days. They said, ‘I tried to do the same exact thing, but it never caught on. No one really cared.’ Well, that’s part of the reason for it. You have to understand how you’re marketing and the landscape. So, no, it doesn’t bother me. And I don’t care. I’m going to take backlash for it — I get that — but everybody who’s between the ages of 10 and probably 30 is going to love it, and those are the ones who are on social media anyway, which is how I’m marketing the campaign. Those are the people I want to grab and have them retweet it or whatever, because that spreads the most awareness.

“And charity, this is another thing, I like giving back and trying to help people. That’s why I’m on Twitter — to help kids. That’s why I come in and donate the Trackman that’s on the wall that was $30,000. That’s why I donated VFR machines to Driveline for studying. They were $11,000. I bought a Keiser machine that’s $6,500. I bought all this different stuff that I’ve put in. And I’ve got a facility in California and I pay all the opening costs for Jim Wagner’s Throwzone. It’s stocked with high-speed cameras and whatever, so there’s another facility that can help kids. The Infield Chatter piece touched a little on this. I like helping people.

“Like, my friends in my personal life. If someone is trying to move up in their life, like, I’ve let people come stay with me for a year rent-free so they can have the time to study and try to move forward in their life. I’ll pay for someone to further their education or make their living situation better so they can try to further their career. But, none of that stuff gets talked about, because it’s all in my personal life. I keep it private and I don’t need any recognition for it. I don’t care. Those people are important to me and I try to improve their life a little.

“Again, this isn’t any different. It’s just now I’m putting it out in public and I’m trying to control the narrative, so it’s more positive. And it’s just something I’m passionate about. I’ve been very fortunate. A lot of people work very hard and don’t have the opportunities that I’ve had and I realize that. So, if I can help out with people who are less fortunate than me genetically or health-wise or just job-position wise or circumstances, it doesn’t matter, then that’s something that I can do and I’m in a position that I can do it and I enjoy doing it.”

Q: Have you ever thought about, if you win a Cy Young…

TB: “When.”

Q: …how will you push yourself after reaching that level?

TB: “My goal is three Cy Youngs. One is not enough. And three is more realistic. Ultimately, I wanted to win the most Cy Youngs ever — That was before pro ball — which is eight. So, I’ve got a long way to go on that. But, yeah, when I win my first Cy Young, it doesn’t even matter, I don’t even have to win the Cy Young. All I have to do is post an ERA south of 3.50 and be in contention for it and the entire landscape of baseball is going to change. There’s going to be nothing left you can say about me. Like, ‘Oh, this doesn’t work. Look, he’s never had an ERA under 4.00.’ OK, well, I just posted a 3.40. Well, ‘He’s not the best pitcher in the league.’ Well, I’m a top-five pitcher in the league in strikeout rate and this and that. OK, well, ‘He walks too many people.’ No, the walk rate’s fallen for the last [few] years. ‘Well, no,’ whatever. There’s going to be nothing left. At some point, all the barriers are going to be broken and everyone’s going to have to accept the fact that, yeah, maybe he does know what he’s talking about. Maybe he’s on to something. Then, at that point, then everything, all this stuff that I’ve been researching for the past 15–20 years or whatever, is going to be flushed into baseball and it’s going to be the new fad. Hopefully, that’s this year.”

Q: What’s the next frontier for your research? You’ve mentioned virtual reality in the past.

TB: “That’s huge. If the technology catches up and it’s realistic enough, and at some point it will, for sure. It’s close. Understanding what hitters actually see to talk about sequencing and whatnot. I think the more tangible one is pitch design, like the stuff I did this offseason, and command training. If you can take, whatever, So and So Big Leaguer with elite stuff, struggles to throw strikes, and you can teach him how to throw strikes consistently without losing stuff, that’s massively beneficial. If you can take XY Big Leaguer who has one plus pitch and you can teach him a second plus pitch, that’s tremendously valuable. And it’s not hard. It’s not hard. It just requires time. It requires the knowledge of what to do and then it requires time and effort being put in by the athlete. But, if one person doesn’t do it, someone else will and that person who doesn’t will be flushed out and the person who does will be a success story and everyone will be talking about he added this pitch or he did that or whatever. That’s the frontier that we’re on right now. Pitch design is being integrated right now. It’s slowly catching on. Command training would be the next one.”