Montero’s assessment not necessarily a reflection on Bauer

Diamondbacks catcher Miguel Montero was upfront about his thoughts on his former teammate Trevor Bauer when asked about his relationship with the pitcher yesterday. Montero claims that the rookie pitcher “never wanted to listen” and would stick to his own preparation methods to the detriment of his own performance.

It was well known before Bauer was even drafted that he had his own ideas about how he should prepare , warm up and ultimately pitch. There were various reports that some teams were shying away from drafting Bauer as a result of these tendencies so it can’t have come as a surprise to the Arizona organisation that the young right hander would come into professional ball with a clear idea of how he wanted to do things.

While Montero may well be proven right in the longer term, Bauer’s well-documented workout regime and methods would have been unlikely to escape the attention of the man who could expect to be catching him while Bauer was coming up through the minor league. It therefore seems entirely conceivable that Montero himself came into their working relationship with his own pre-conceptions and stubbornness.

Only those directly involved know how blame should be apportioned for the breakdown in Montero and Bauer’s relationship, but baseball is a pretty reactionary sport in many ways so the idea of a young player coming into a club and not immediately buying into the existing way of doing things isn’t a hard scenario to imagine causing issues among some members of the organisation. Clearly Bauer is putting a certain amount of extra pressure on himself to succeed if he remains intent on sticking with his own methods, but it is still too early to pass judgement on the usefulness of those methods.