Bauer's public face: Hard on himself
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GOODYEAR, Ariz. -- Behind the scenes, the Indians have had good discussions with Trevor Bauer about his approach for Spring Training and the season ahead. The picture painted of those conversations is a drastic contrast to the way the pitcher has handled the topic publicly.
Following his three-inning outing against the Mariners on Tuesday, Bauer was abrupt with his answers and expressed disappointment with his performance. The right-hander used expletives to describe his curveball, and said his only goal was to throw his fastball as hard as he could during his second start of the spring.
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"It's one of the only enjoyable things about baseball," Bauer said with a shrug. "I don't even know what kind of pitcher I want to be anymore. I just want to throw hard."
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Indians pitching coach Mickey Callaway said Wednesday that Bauer is indeed working on his velocity, which dipped some last season after the pitcher spent the previous winter focusing on command. This past offseason, the 25-year-old starter concentrated on velocity training, and he has tried to carry that work over into his Cactus League outings.
While Bauer said his curveball was not good against Seattle, Callaway said he was impressed by the pitch, which caught Seth Smith looking for a strikeout to end the first inning. The pitching coach added that Bauer's use of his fastball -- pitch speed aside -- has looked good through two starts.
"I think he's in a pretty decent spot from what I'm seeing him try to do in the games," Callaway said. "Last year, it was fastball in, fastball in, fastball in to righties. And now, he's trying to throw fastballs away, trying to throw fastballs down and away, mixing his pitches. He's still got the same plan of attack to lefties -- fastball in and throwing stuff off that -- and he looks pretty good to me."
Callaway also said Bauer's public interviews do not reflect how their conversations have gone.
"They're not like that, no," Callaway said.
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Indians manager Terry Francona echoed that sentiment on Wednesday, noting that there has been productive dialogue behind closed doors with Bauer.
"If you answer people in a way that's either combative or short," Francona said, "you're kind of opening it up for them to write what they want. ... For whatever reason, Trevor's been like that. I'll see something he says in the media and it's a complete different tone than when I was talking to him. What's more important to me is what he says to us, but you also have to live with what you say.
"I know he can get real active on the Twitter and things like that. We've talked to him about stuff like that, but everybody's different."