Now that he’s free of legal turmoil, Trevor Bauer has picked up things right where he left them. The Los Angeles Dodger star continues to be Major League Baseball’s biggest instigator, for better or worse.
Bauer was forced to watch his team from the sidelines after a woman filed for a restraining order against him. She claimed Bauer sexually assaulted him but evidence showed it was all consensual.
But even though he stayed silent for months, the controversial hurler kept receipts while in the shadows. That’s why he didn’t hesitate to pursue legal action against The Athletic and their former writer Molly Knight for alleged defamation.
MLB News: Trevor Bauer Sues Molly Knight, The Athletic For Defamation
(Transcript via New York Post)
“In the lawsuit against Knight and The Athletic, Bauer’s attorneys claim that Knight and The Athletic ‘defamed Mr. Bauer by creating and spreading the false narrative that Mr. Bauer fractured the Complainant’s skull.’
‘There was no basis for that assertion because the Complainant’s own medical records — which The Athletic possessed — showed that she had no such fracture,’ the suit continues. ‘Nonetheless, consistent with their prior and subsequent expressions of animus toward Mr. Bauer, The Athletic and Ms. Knight publicized that false attack, which was picked up and further disseminated to a larger audience by other media outlets and social media sites.’
The suit also cited tweets from Knight that referred to the accuser’s skull as ‘cracked’ or ‘fractured.’
‘Defendants acted with actual malice because they deliberately ignored the truth — which was evident in the medical records possessed by The Athletic — and because the Defendants’ defamatory statements were part of a campaign to harass Mr. Bauer, as evidenced by, among other actions, their prior and subsequent false and misleading statements about his conduct and character, their efforts to dissuade Major League Baseball teams from signing him, and their strident complaints about the Los Angeles Dodgers’ decision to add him to their team.'”
Bauer and his camp have always been quite eager to defend his name so it’s unlikely that he’ll drop the lawsuit. He knows his reputation took a big hit and has proven to be willing to go the extra mile to make everybody pay for that.