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Trevor Bauer’s initial 324-game suspension for violating Major League Baseball’s domestic violence policy has been reduced to 194 games by an arbitrator, the league announced Thursday, ending a seven-month grievance process and bringing some clarity to a saga that has been unfolding for the past year and a half.

Bauer has served only 144 games of his suspension, but arbitrator Martin Scheinman ruled that he is eligible to be reinstated immediately, essentially giving him credit for the time he served on MLB’s restricted list in the second half of the 2021 season. Bauer, however, will be docked his pay from the Los Angeles Dodgers through the first 50 games of the 2023 season to make up the difference.

The Dodgers have 14 days to decide whether they will reinstate him onto their 40-man roster. The team released a short statement Thursday night that read: “We have just been informed of the arbitrator’s ruling and will comment as soon as practical.”

Bauer, as part of a tweet, wrote: “Can’t wait to see y’all out at a stadium soon!”

Bauer is under contract with the Dodgers for only one more season, on a deal that initially called for him to be paid $32 million. With the 194-game suspension, the Dodgers saved about $28.1 million off his 2022 salary and will save another $9.5 million off his 2023 salary.

Despite the reduction, Bauer’s suspension stands as the longest in the six-plus years of the domestic violence policy.

Bauer, the 31-year-old former Cy Young Award winner, has been facing sexual assault allegations since June 2021, notably by a San Diego woman who obtained a temporary restraining order against him. Bauer refuted her allegations and remains in litigation with the woman. Two other women made similar assault allegations to the Washington Post, which Bauer and his legal team have also refuted.

The L.A. District Attorney’s Office declined to prosecute Bauer in February, but MLB handed him a 324-game suspension on April 30, twice longer than the previous longest suspension under its policy. Bauer then became the first player to appeal.

Scheinman is an independent arbitrator who is retained by both MLB and the MLB Players Association.

“While we believe a longer suspension was warranted, MLB will abide by the neutral arbitrator’s decision, which upholds baseball’s longest-ever active player suspension for sexual assault or domestic violence,” MLB wrote in its statement Thursday. “We understand this process was difficult for the witnesses involved and we thank them for their participation. Due to the collectively bargained confidentiality provisions of the joint program, we are unable to provide further details at this time.”

Bauer joined the Dodgers in February 2021 on a three-year, $102 million contract that included two opt-outs — but he hasn’t pitched since June 28 of the first year.

The following day, a then-27-year-old San Diego woman filed a request for a domestic violence restraining order (DVRO) in which she alleged that Bauer assaulted her over the course of two sexual encounters at his Pasadena, California, home in April and May of that year. The woman — whom ESPN has chosen not to name — alleged that he choked her unconscious on multiple occasions, repeatedly scratched and punched her throughout her body, sodomized her without consent and left her with injuries that warranted a trip to the emergency room after rough sex. Bauer and his attorneys, Jon Fetterolf and Rachel Luba, denied the allegations, calling them “fraudulent” and “baseless” in an initial statement.

MLB first placed Bauer on administrative leave on July 2, 2021, triggering an investigation. After that, two other women, both from Ohio, made similar allegations to the Post. In August 2021, a woman told the Post she sought a DVRO against Bauer in June 2020 and accused him of choking and striking her without consent during sex and sending threatening messages. That woman, the Post reported, dismissed her order six weeks later after Bauer’s attorneys threatened legal action. The second woman alleged to the Post that Bauer choked her unconscious without consent on multiple occasions dating back to 2013.

MLB said it conducted “an extensive investigation” into Bauer’s off-field conduct but did not disclose specifics of its findings, nor did it reveal how many women made assault allegations against him.

Bauer, meanwhile, has denied wrongdoing, saying the acts were consensual. He denied the first woman’s allegations on Twitter and published sexually explicit text messages from her in an effort to show consent. In August 2021, after an L.A. judge dismissed the San Diego woman’s request for a permanent restraining order, Bauer released a seven-minute video on YouTube in which he categorically denied her version of events.

The L.A. County District Attorney’s Office declined to file criminal charges against Bauer in February 2022, rejecting charges of assault by means likely to produce great bodily injury and sodomy of an unconscious person and domestic violence. But MLB, which, according to sources, heard similar allegations from multiple women, suspended him three months later.

Prior to Bauer, 15 players had been suspended under the domestic violence, sexual assault and child abuse policy that was introduced in August 2015. The policy, jointly agreed to with the MLB Players Association, grants MLB commissioner Rob Manfred the autonomy to suspend players under “just cause” and does not require him to meet the proof-beyond-a-reasonable-doubt threshold required in the country’s court system. Those suspensions — not counting that of former reliever Felipe Vazquez, who’s serving a jail sentence for sexual assault of a minor — have ranged from 15 to 162 games and were the result of negotiated settlements in which players waived their right to appeal.

Bauer became the first player to challenge a ruling, triggering a prolonged process in which a three-person panel — consisting of one rep from MLB, another from the MLBPA and an independent arbiter (in this case, Scheinman) — reviews findings and interviews witnesses to determine whether to uphold, reduce or throw out a suspension.

After MLB first placed Bauer on administrative leave, the Dodgers canceled his scheduled bobblehead night and removed his merchandise from their stores. Team president Stan Kasten sent an email to employees in August 2021, saying he was “deeply troubled by the allegations” against Bauer. Outside of that, the team had not commented publicly before their statement Thursday.

Bauer’s suspension, initially slated to last until the 19th game of the 2024 season, kept the Dodgers from paying him in 2022. Uncertainty over the arbitrators’ ruling was seen as a primary reason the Dodgers, hesitant to exceed the luxury tax threshold a third consecutive year, mostly stayed away from the star free agents this offseason.

In recent months, Bauer has continued to populate his YouTube channel with videos of him taking part in lively bullpen sessions and providing pitching tips.

Bauer has filed defamation lawsuits against two media companies, Deadspin and The Athletic. He also filed suit against the San Diego woman, who followed with a countersuit this past August. On Nov. 23, U.S. District Court Judge James Selna allowed the San Diego woman to proceed with her lawsuit and dismissed Bauer’s defamation suit against one of her former attorneys. In his ruling, Selna wrote that the initial denial of the restraining order by L.A. Superior Court Judge Dianna Gould-Saltman did not determine whether Bauer had committed an act of abuse and that neither party had asked her to make such a determination.

“The state court proceedings did not necessarily decide that Bauer did not batter or sexually assault [the woman],” Selna added.

Bauer won the Golden Spikes Award at UCLA in 2011 and was the No. 3 draft pick that year. He clashed with teammates in Arizona, prompting a trade, and had two notable incidents in Cleveland, allegedly cutting his finger with a drone before a 2016 playoff start and hurling a baseball over the center-field fence after being removed from a 2019 outing on July 28, 2019, three days before being traded again.

Bauer clashed with Manfred over his handling of the Houston Astros‘ sign-stealing scandal and the commissioner’s efforts to market the game to a younger audience, among other topics. He has built a reputation as a difficult teammate, but he is also considered one of the most forward-thinking, analytically minded pitchers in the sport.

Bauer made a case for a Cy Young Award in 2018, then won it during the COVID-19-shortened 2020 season while with the Cincinnati Reds. The Dodgers signed him later that offseason, outbidding the New York Mets despite rampant criticism surrounding Bauer’s history of bullying others on social media. Bauer pitched like an ace for Los Angeles in the first half of the 2021 season, posting a 2.59 ERA in 17 starts.

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What are torpedo bats? Are they legal? What to know about MLB’s hottest trend

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What are torpedo bats? Are they legal? What to know about MLB's hottest trend

The opening weekend of the 2025 MLB season was taken over by a surprise star — torpedo bats.

The bowling pin-shaped bats became the talk of the sport after the Yankees’ home run onslaught on the first Saturday of the season put it in the spotlight and the buzz hasn’t slowed since.

What exactly is a torpedo bat? How does it help hitters? And how is it legal? Let’s dig in.

Read: An MIT-educated professor, the Yankees and the bat that could be changing baseball


What is a torpedo bat and why is it different from a traditional MLB bat?

The idea of the torpedo bat is to take a size format — say, 34 inches and 32 ounces — and distribute the wood in a different geometric shape than the traditional form to ensure the fattest part of the bat is located where the player makes the most contact. Standard bats taper toward an end cap that is as thick diametrically as the sweet spot of the barrel. The torpedo bat moves some of the mass on the end of the bat about 6 to 7 inches lower, giving it a bowling-pin shape, with a much thinner end.


How does it help hitters?

The benefits for those who like swinging with it — and not everyone who has swung it likes it — are two-fold. Both are rooted in logic and physics. The first is that distributing more mass to the area of most frequent contact aligns with players’ swing patterns and provides greater impact when bat strikes ball. Players are perpetually seeking ways to barrel more balls, and while swings that connect on the end of the bat and toward the handle probably will have worse performance than with a traditional bat, that’s a tradeoff they’re willing to make for the additional slug. And as hitters know, slug is what pays.

The second benefit, in theory, is increased bat speed. Imagine a sledgehammer and a broomstick that both weigh 32 ounces. The sledgehammer’s weight is almost all at the end, whereas the broomstick’s is distributed evenly. Which is easier to swing fast? The broomstick, of course, because shape of the sledgehammer takes more strength and effort to move. By shedding some of the weight off the end of the torpedo bat and moving it toward the middle, hitters have found it swings very similarly to a traditional model but with slightly faster bat velocity.


Why did it become such a big story so early in the 2025 MLB season?

Because the New York Yankees hit nine home runs in a game Saturday and Michael Kay, their play-by-play announcer, pointed out that some of them came from hitters using a new bat shape. The fascination was immediate. While baseball, as an industry, has implemented forward-thinking rules in recent seasons, the modification to something so fundamental and known as the shape of a bat registered as bizarre. The initial response from many who saw it: How is this legal?


OK. How is this legal?

Major League Baseball’s bat regulations are relatively permissive. Currently, the rules allow for a maximum barrel diameter of 2.61 inches, a maximum length of 42 inches and a smooth and round shape. The lack of restrictions allows MLB’s authorized bat manufacturers to toy with bat geometry and for the results to still fall within the regulations.


Who came up with the idea of using them?

The notion of a bowling-pin-style bat has kicked around baseball for years. Some bat manufacturers made smaller versions as training tools. But the version that’s now infiltrating baseball goes back two years when a then-Yankees coach named Aaron Leanhardt started asking hitters how they should counteract the giant leaps in recent years made by pitchers.

When Yankees players responded that bigger barrels would help, Leanhardt — an MIT-educated former Michigan physics professor who left academia to work in the sports industry — recognized that as long as bats stayed within MLB parameters, he could change their geometry to make them a reality. Leanhardt, who left the Yankees to serve as major league field coordinator for the Miami Marlins over the winter, worked with bat manufacturers throughout the 2023 and 2024 seasons to make that a reality.


When did it first appear in MLB games?

It’s unclear specifically when. But Yankees slugger Giancarlo Stanton used a torpedo bat last year and went on a home run-hitting rampage in October that helped send the Yankees to the World Series. New York Mets star Francisco Lindor also used a torpedo-style bat last year and went on to finish second in National League MVP voting.


Who are some of the other notable early users of torpedo bats?

In addition to Stanton and Lindor, Yankees hitters Anthony Volpe, Austin Wells, Jazz Chisholm Jr., Cody Bellinger and Paul Goldschmidt have used torpedoes to great success. Others who have used them in games include Tampa Bay’s Junior Caminero, Minnesota’s Ryan Jeffers and Toronto’s Davis Schneider. And that’s just the beginning. Hundreds more players are expected to test out torpedoes — and perhaps use them in games — in the coming weeks.


How is this different from a corked bat?

Corking bats involves drilling a hole at the end of the bat, filling it in and capping it. The use of altered bats allows players to swing faster because the material with which they replace the wood — whether it’s cork, superballs or another material — is lighter. Any sort of bat adulteration is illegal and, if found, results in suspension.


Could a rule be changed to ban them?

Could it happen? Sure. Leagues and governing bodies have put restrictions on equipment they believe fundamentally altered fairness. Stick curvature is limited in hockey. Full-body swimsuits made of polyurethane and neoprene are banned by World Aquatics. But officials at MLB have acknowledged that the game’s pendulum has swung significantly toward pitching in recent years, and if an offensive revolution comes about because of torpedo bats — and that is far from a guarantee — it could bring about more balance to the game. If that pendulum swings too far, MLB could alter its bat regulations, something it has done multiple times already this century.


So the torpedo bat is here to stay?

Absolutely. Bat manufacturers are cranking them out and shipping them to interested players with great urgency. Just how widely the torpedo bat is adopted is the question that will play out over the rest of the season. But it has piqued the curiosity of nearly every hitter in the big leagues, and just as pitchers toy with new pitches to see if they can marginally improve themselves, hitters will do the same with bats.

Comfort is paramount with a bat, so hitters will test them during batting practice and in cage sessions before unleashing them during the game. As time goes on, players will find specific shapes that are most comfortable to them and best suit their swing during bat-fitting sessions — similar to how golfers seek custom clubs. But make no mistake: This is an almost-overnight alteration of the game, and “traditional or torpedo” is a question every big leaguer going forward will ask himself.

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St. Pete to spend $22.5M to fix Tropicana Field

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St. Pete to spend .5M to fix Tropicana Field

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — The once and possibly future home of the Tampa Bay Rays will get a new roof to replace the one shredded by Hurricane Milton with the goal of having the ballpark ready for the 2026 season, city officials decided in a vote Thursday.

The St. Petersburg City Council voted 7-1 to approve $22.5 million to begin the repairs at Tropicana Field, which will start with a membrane roof that must be in place before other work can continue. Although the Rays pulled out of a planned $1.3 billion new stadium deal, the city is still contractually obligated to fix the Trop.

“We are legally bound by an agreement. The agreement requires us to fix the stadium,” said council member Lissett Hanewicz, who is an attorney. “We need to go forward with the roof repair so we can do the other repairs.”

The hurricane damage forced the Rays to play home games this season at Steinbrenner Field across the bay in Tampa, the spring training home of the New York Yankees. The Rays went 4-2 on their first homestand ever at an open-air ballpark, which seats around 11,000 fans.

Under the current agreement with the city, the Rays owe three more seasons at the Trop once it’s ready again for baseball, through 2028. It’s unclear if the Rays will maintain a long-term commitment to the city or look to Tampa or someplace else for a new stadium. Major League Baseball has said keeping the team in the Tampa Bay region is a priority. The Rays have played at the Trop since their inception in 1998.

The team said it would have a statement on the vote later Thursday.

The overall cost of Tropicana Field repairs is estimated at $56 million, said city architect Raul Quintana. After the roof, the work includes fixing the playing surface, ensuring audio and visual electronics are working, installing flooring and drywall, getting concession stands running and other issues.

“This is a very complex project. We feel like we’re in a good place,” Quintana said at the council meeting Thursday.

Under the proposed timeline, the roof installation will take about 10 months. The unique membrane system is fabricated in Germany and assembled in China, Quintana said, adding that officials are examining how President Donald Trump’s new tariffs might affect the cost.

The new roof, he added, will be able to withstand hurricane winds as high as 165 mph. Hurricane Milton, one of the strongest hurricanes ever in the Atlantic basin at one point, blasted ashore Oct. 9 south of Tampa Bay with Category 3 winds of about 125 mph.

Citing mounting costs, the Rays last month pulled out of a deal with the city and Pinellas County for a new $1.3 billion ballpark to be built near the Trop site. That was part of a broader $6.5 billion project known as the Historic Gas Plant district to bring housing, retail and restaurants, arts and a Black history museum to a once-thriving Black neighborhood razed for the original stadium.

The city council plans to vote on additional Trop repair costs over the next few months.

“This is our contractual obligation. I don’t like it more than anybody else. I’d much rather be spending that money on hurricane recovery and helping residents in the most affected neighborhoods,” council member Brandi Gabbard said. “These are the cards that we’re dealt.”

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Tulane suspends Finley after transfer QB’s arrest

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Tulane suspends Finley after transfer QB's arrest

Tulane quarterback TJ Finley has been suspended following his arrest Wednesday in New Orleans on a charge of illegal possession of stolen things worth more than $25,000.

Finley, 23, whose name is Tyler Jamal, was booked and released. Tulane said in a statement that the length of the suspension will depend on the outcome of his case. The school cited privacy laws in declining to comment further.

University police responded Wednesday to an address where a truck was blocking a driveway. After looking up the license plate, police saw it registered to a vehicle stolen in Atlanta. Finley arrived to move the car and informed the officer that he had bought the truck recently. He’s scheduled to appear in court June 1.

Finley transferred to Tulane in December after spending the 2024 season with Western Kentucky. He had been competing for the team’s starting quarterback job in spring practice alongside fellow transfers Kadin Semonza and Donovan Leary.

Finley, a native of Ponchatoula, Louisiana, started his college career at LSU before transferring to Auburn for two seasons and then Texas State in 2023. He started five games for both LSU and Auburn but had his most success with Texas State, passing for 3,439 yards and 24 touchdowns.

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