"This is starting to hurt"- Trevor Bauer makes feelings known about his relentless pursuit of 50,000 catches
Former LA Dodgers pitcher Trevor Bauer is no stranger to pushing limits. As witnessed during his MLB tenure with the Cincinnati Reds, the former Cy Young winner can be really determined when he gets into his groove.
On Wednesday, Bauer released a video in collaboration with Watch Momentum, where he gave a sneak peek into his challenge to catch 50,000 baseballs. In the video, Bauer admits the toll the challenge is taking on him.
Bauer has completed 2,100 catches, but said his thumb was getting increasingly sore.
"My thumb is still getting bent back quite a bit," Bauer said. "Hopefully, my hand just kind of goes numb—and that’s pretty much what happened. Thank God it did."
At one point, Trevor Bauer took a hard ball straight to the palm. He did wince from the impact but said it "didn’t sting as bad" as he expected.
"I’m going crazy," Bauer said.
"Throws 2,100 to 2,300 were pretty smooth sailing, but why does it feel like these balls are coming in way harder than a casual game of catch?" Bauer questioned.
The challenge hit another roadblock around the 2,350 mark when a counting mishap forced him to double-check his tally.
"Am I miscounting?" Bauer asked his throwing partner.
Upon checking, it was found that Bauer missed two clicks, highlighting how mentally exhausting the challenge was proving to be.
With thousands of throws still to go, Bauer is still determined to get it done.
Trevor Bauer shares advice for pitchers facing problems in their rotation phase
While Trevor Bauer is yet to find any takers in MLB, he continues to use his social media platform for a variety of reasons, including giving young pitchers advice on how to extract the best from their bodies.
Two weeks ago, Bauer, who has joined the Yokohama DeNA BayStars of Nippon Professional Baseball, shared important pitching advice for those facing a problem in the rotation phase of the delivery.
"I'm going to give you a drill that you can work on that will really help, and I call it the posture squat drill," Bauer said in the video. "It looks like this: Here, and then you dictate the motion from the hip. You’ve got to focus on the right hip—or if you're a lefty, the left hip.
"Come set, squat, and rotate. That drill is really going to help with back hip rotation because it simulates how you get to the bottom of your delivery here and then rotate your hip. But here’s the thing—if you have a problem in the block phase, that drill is not going to do you any good."
The video was a promotion for the 4-App Ultimate Pitching Program, where Bauer will personally review mechanics and provide a full breakdown of what users can improve on.