Yankees: Gerrit Cole’s Enemy Trevor Bauer Would Still Be a Bad Fit on 2021 Team

Yankees ace Gerrit Cole and Trevor Bauer are sworn enemies. Even if you like him on Twitter, he’d be a bad 2021 teammate.

Trevor Bauer has come out of this extended “MLB in chaos” media cycle looking like a very attractive representative for the players moving forward.

He’s been at the forefront of vocalizing exactly why things have seemed so dysfunctional, as well as pinpointing Rob Manfred’s next moves before he’s even made them.

With Bauer approaching free agency after the 2020 season along with Masahiro Tanaka and James Paxton, it seems like he’d be an intriguing and enigmatic possible addition to New York’s rotation.

Considering he declared a few years back that he’s only interested in signing one-year deals from here on out, it only seems more likely that New York would give him a shot, considering the stunning lack of security involved.

But we’re here to remind you that such a thing would be a very, very bad idea. See, New York locked Gerrit Cole up for nine years this offseason, and he and his old college teammate Bauer do…not get along very well. It all dates back to their UCLA days.

Though Bauer claimed in a 2018 MLB.com interview to no longer hold a grudge, it’s clear that words Cole apparently spoke to him back in the day cut him to the core. As Bauer tells it, “”I have no problem with Gerrit. We had a rocky relationship in college, because he told me that I had no future in baseball and he insulted my work ethic as a freshman. I don’t take kindly to those couple things, so we had our issues.”

Is that the type of energy you want in the 2021 Yankees’ locker room?

Of course, this all comes from Bauer’s perspective…but if this side of the feud exists, then why would anyone bother examining the other half? Add in all of your other misgivings about Bauer in New York (the temperament, that one time he hucked a baseball over the center field fence in Kansas City), and it seems beyond not worth it.

No need to ask Gerrit Cole about what transpired during their collegiate days. This proposal seems DOA, no matter how much you’ve loved watching Bauer during these recent negotiations. New York already hitched themselves to the other horse in this twosome.