Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Trevor Bauer will miss the rest of the season.
Major League Baseball and the players’ association extended his paid administrative leave Friday through the end of the World Series.
Bauer was placed on seven days’ paid leave July 2 under the union and MLB’s joint domestic violence and sexual assault policy after a Southern California woman said he choked her into unconsciousness, punched her repeatedly and had anal sex with her without her consent during two sexual encounters earlier this year. MLB and the union have since agreed to several extensions.
The decision to extend the leave through the rest of the season had been expected, given that Bauer had not pitched since June 29 and was running out of time to get back in shape to return to the mound while games remained. The regular season is scheduled to end Oct. 3 and the minimum ramp-up time for pitchers is generally regarded as three weeks.
“That’s more on the legal side, so I think for us just focusing on the baseball side, it really hasn’t affected the guys in the clubhouse,” manager Dave Roberts said.
The Dodgers are in the thick of the NL playoff race, trailing the first-place San Francisco Giants in their bid to win a ninth straight division title. Bauer’s absence has compounded the problems of a pitching staff beset by injuries.
He had a record of 8-2 and a 2.59 ERA in 17 appearances in his first season with the Dodgers. He’ll be paid his $28 million salary.
Asked if Bauer will ever pitch for the Dodgers again, Roberts said, “I have no idea. I just really haven’t given any thought to that.”
Bauer’s representatives issued a statement saying he had agreed to extend his administrative leave through the playoffs “in a measure of good faith and in an effort to minimize any distraction to the Dodgers organization and his teammates.”
“He continues to cooperate with the MLB investigation and refute the baseless allegations against him,” the statement said. “Again, by definition administrative leave is neither a disciplinary action nor does it in any way reflect a finding in the league’s investigation.”
The Pasadena Police Department last month delivered the results of its own three-month investigation into the woman’s allegations to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office and the case is under review. The move came a week after Judge Dianna Gould-Saltman of Los Angeles Superior Court denied the 27-year-old San Diego woman’s request for a restraining order against Bauer.
In denying the civil domestic violence restraining order after a four-day hearing, Gould-Saltman said that according to the woman’s testimony, Bauer honored her boundaries when she set them. The judge said Bauer couldn’t know the boundaries the woman didn’t express to him.
The judge noted that in the woman’s communications with Bauer, the woman “was not ambiguous about wanting rough sex in the parties’ first encounter, and wanting rougher sex in the second encounter.”
Bauer has said through representatives that everything that happened between the two was “wholly consensual” in the nights they spent together in April and May at his Pasadena home.
The Associated Press does not typically identify people who say they have been victims of sexual assault.
Earlier this year, after winning his first Cy Young with the Cincinnati Reds last season, Bauer agreed to a $102 million, three-year contract to join his hometown Dodgers.
