Cleveland Indians pitcher Trevor Bauer put his manager in a tough position with some of the unfounded accusations he made toward the Houston Astros earlier this month, and Terry Francona acknowledged that over the weekend.
Bauer basically declared war on the Astros a few weeks back when he attributed their pitching staff’s success to doctoring the baseball. That forced Houston manager AJ Hinch to have to defend his team, and Francona says he apologized to his counterpart on Friday over the situation.
“I don’t think that’s fair to him,” Francona said, per Alyson Footer of MLB.com. “I just told him that I appreciated the way he handled it, and we’ll try to move on.”
Bauer’s allegations led to a back and forth with several Astros players. Houston third baseman Alex Bregman called Bauer “Tyler” on Twitter to get a rise out of him, and Bauer responded by adding the name Tyler to his jersey on Friday. Francona said that’s when he decided to reach out to Hinch via text message.
“That’s not what you really want to do as a manager, things like that,” he said. “I’ve seen guys like (Justin Verlander) do it for so many years. I have so much respect for guys that can do that. I just wanted to make sure AJ knew that.”
Hinch said he appreciated the acknowledgement.
“It was a great gesture and that’s one of the reasons why Tito is one of the best,” Hinch said. “I have a ton of respect for him for many reasons, that being one of them. He mentioned how much work he knows we put into this, and how we’re all trying to get everybody better. He just wanted to be done with the whole topic, and close it.”
Bauer seemed like he might be trying to put an end to the feud when he made a donation to Lance McCullers’ charity recently, but he couldn’t even do that without taking a swipe at the Astros pitcher. Perhaps Francona’s decision to reach out to Hinch will inspire Bauer to give it a rest.
