Trevor Bauer says that he has no problem with Gerrit Cole, contrary to some of the information that’s being written about them.
Bauer and Cole are set to square off against each other on Sunday when the Cleveland Indians and Houston Astros meet. The two were teammates at UCLA and had enormous success in college before going Nos. 1 and 3 overall in the 2011 MLB Draft. Now that they’re set to meet on Sunday, stories about their relationship are being published.
On Thursday, USA Today wrote a piece about them. The first sentence said the two “can’t stand each other.”
Bauer says that’s not the case.
“I have no problem with Gerrit,” Bauer said, as published by MLB.com’s Jordan Bastian. “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. And I have, I don’t know, those feelings have long since faded. Right now, it’s cool to see him having success. He’s done a lot of hard work. He’s changed his mechanics around. He’s changed his pitch repertoire and how he uses it and his attack plan and stuff like that, and he’s having a ton of success with it. And it’s good to see, because it’s good for him, it’s good for me, it’s good for the tapestry of our lives.”
Bauer went on to say that he hopes Cole continues to have success in MLB and that they trade Cy Young Awards. And as far as the accusation that they can’t stand each other and won’t talk to each other, Bauer disproved that. He says the two talked at an alumni game this year and their conversation was “pleasant.”
For their careers at UCLA, Bauer was 34–8 with a 2.36 ERA and 11.1 strikeouts per nine innings. Cole went 21-20 with a 3.38 ERA and 10.5 strikeouts per nine innings. Though Bauer had better numbers in college and won the Golden Spikes Award as a junior, Cole still went No. 1 overall in the draft to Pittsburgh. Both have been successful in the pros, though one could argue that Cole has been a little more successful to date.
Some would also argue that Bauer’s comments about the Astros stemmed from bitter fillings towards Cole.
