Trevor Bauer is not pleased about a report that came out Tuesday claiming he is seeking a record-setting contract in free agency.
Jon Heyman of MLB Network tweeted on Tuesday that Bauer is looking for a five- or six-year deal at somewhere between $36 and $40 million per year. Heyman said he reached out to Bauer’s agent, Rachel Luba, for confirmation on the numbers, but Luba declined to comment. Or did she?
Bauer accused Heyman of not actually reaching out to Luba to verify the information. Luba said she never had a chance to open Heyman’s text messages and that she only declined comment in response to something he asked her in a previous conversation.
Allllllsooooooo if you’re going to go out of your way to report that someone declines to comment you might want to make sure it’s ACTUALLY true (*it’s not*). Don’t you have to actually talk to someone for them to “decline”? Wouldn’t want to be fake news now would we Jonny boy? https://t.co/lyn4UIL58j
— Trevor Bauer (@BauerOutage) December 30, 2020
I’ve been traveling all day and haven’t opened your texts re contract lengths and $ amounts. If you’re referring to prior conversations we’ve had, when I declined to comment, I feel it’s disingenuous to tweet this without giving me a chance to respond to your texts this evening.
— Rachel Luba (@AgentRachelLuba) December 30, 2020
Gerrit Cole, who signed a nine-year, $324 million deal with the Yankees last season, set the record for average annual value of a contract at $36 million. Bauer has said throughout his career that he will only sign one-year deals, but he has apparently changed his mind if Heyman’s information is accurate. Though, it seems like the right-hander wants us to think it is not.
Heyman is a respected reporter, so it’s hard to believe he would fabricate information about Bauer’s agent declining comment. Perhaps there was some sort of misunderstanding in the text exchange.
