The entire Major League Baseball landscape was rocked on Friday when reigning NL Cy Young Award winner Trevor Bauer announced that he was signing with the Los Angeles Dodgers. Leading up to the announcement, the New York Mets were being extremely aggressive in their pursuit of Bauer and were thought to be the favorite to land the star pitcher.
The Mets' chances appeared to be increasing on Friday afternoon when -- right before announcing he was singing with the Dodgers -- Bauer's official website began posting Mets merchandise.
On Sunday, Bauer took the opportunity to issue an apology to Mets fans for leading them on.
Mets fans, I owe you an explanation and apology.
— Trevor Bauer (トレバー・バウアー) (@BauerOutage) February 8, 2021
My intention this entire offseason was to engage with fans in ways that made the off season and free agent process more interesting. I woke up early on Friday not knowing what my decision would be and spent the next 5 hours on
"Throughout the free agency process, my team prepared marketing materials for multiple organizations, as I didn't know where or when I would sign," Bauer tweeted. "In order to be prepared for a moment that could materialize very quickly, we had uploaded many of those to my website on the back-end. The plan was not to have those pages live until a decision had been made, which is obviously not what happened.
"Unfortunately, that link was posted in error well before any decision had been made. That was the second mistake. Understandably, the link was quickly discovered and began to spread on social media."
Bauer added that the confusion regarding the situation was both "understandable and regrettable."
It's not weird that Bauer, who has a big online presence, had announcements planned for multiple teams that he was considering signing with. The problem was ultimately that a member of his team had a quick trigger finger and posted the Mets merchandise tad prematurely.
"I look forward to my next visit to Citi Field and hope to hear you just as loud in person, even if it's not in cheers for me," Bauer added.
