LOS ANGELES — Trevor Bauer will not rejoin the Dodgers after the All-Star break.
Bauer’s leave from the Dodgers has been extended through July 27, under an agreement between Major League Baseball and the players’ union.
Bauer last pitched for the Dodgers on June 28, one day before a woman accused him of sexual assault and obtained a temporary restraining order against him. The league put him on paid administrative leave July 2, and this marks the second extension of that leave.
This extension carries beyond July 23, when Bauer and his accuser are set for a Los Angeles Superior Court hearing in which a judge will consider whether to keep the restraining order in force.
The Pasadena police department continues to investigate Bauer for felony assault, and the Los Angeles County district attorney has made no decision whether to file criminal charges against him. He has not been arrested.
MLB is conducting a separate investigation. The league has not met with the woman making the allegations.
If the July 23 hearing takes place — Bauer can ask for a delay — MLB‘s investigation could be informed by whatever information emerges from the hearing. However, legal experts have told The Los Angeles Times that Bauer might not risk testifying at the hearing if a decision about whether to charge him has not been made, because any of his testimony in a hearing about the restraining order could be used against him in a potential criminal case.
The agreement between the league and the union mitigates some risk for both parties. Bauer continues to receive his salary on leave, about $4 million for the 26 days to which both sides have agreed so far.
If the union had declined to extend the leave, Commissioner Rob Manfred could have suspended Bauer based on whatever evidence the league had obtained to this point. The suspension would have been unpaid, so Bauer could have lost millions, and the league would have risked the possibility that the suspension would have ended as more incriminating information emerged, with MLB at that point unable to suspend him twice for the same offense.
The woman alleged he had choked her unconscious in two sexual encounters, on April 22 and May 16, and injured her face during the second one. The woman obtained a temporary restraining order against him on June 29, providing the court with a hospital examination report in which she had been diagnosed as having suffered “assault by manual strangulation” and “acute head injury.”
Representatives of Bauer have said that the pitcher “vehemently denies her account of the two meetings” and that the encounters were “wholly consensual.”
Bauer, 30, played at Hart High in Santa Clarita and UCLA. The Dodgers signed him to a three-year, $102 million free-agent contract in February. Since MLB placed Bauer on leave, the team has canceled a scheduled Bauer bobblehead promotion and withdrawn his jerseys from sale.
