Trevor Bauer's extremely fake no-hitter won't have MLB teams knocking on his door

In around 99 percent of instances, a guy in his mid-30s throwing a no-hitter for an independent-league team would be the sort of thing you chuckle about before immediately moving on with your day. This time, though, the 30-something in question was former MLB star Trevor Bauer, which means we have to go through yet another round of "hey, why isn't this guy playing in the Majors again?"

Bauer threw a seven-inning no-hitter in the second game of a doubleheader on Sunday for the Long Island Ducks of the independent Atlantic League, a team he signed with earlier this month. Afterward, he proceeded to victory lap as though that performance proved ... well, something, I guess, although I really can't imagine what.

Bauer is now 35 years old, and hasn't pitched in a big-league game since 2021. In case you need a reminder, in 2022 he was suspended by MLB for violating its joint domestic violence, sexual assault and child abuse policy. And yet, all these years later, he and his followers are still out here peddling the claim that he's one of the best pitchers in the world if he were only given a chance to prove it. So, while it's hardly how I'd like to be spending my time, let's go through this again: No, throwing a no-hitter against unaffiliated hitters isn't an argument for a spot in a Major League rotation, and no, the allegations against Bauer aren't the only reason he is where he is right now.

Trevor Bauer's no-hitter is hardly worth writing home about

We can start with the obvious: As the second game of a Sunday doubleheader, Bauer only needed to get through seven innings rather than nine. That might not sound like a huge difference, but that's six more outs to get while facing hitters who are seeing you for a third time that day — not to mention six more outs in which you can fall victim to all kinds of batted-ball luck.

And that's before we even get to the fact that Bauer was facing a deeply unserious lineup. Let's take a quick look at the nine players he went up against on Sunday, along with their baseball resumes.

• 2B Jeremy Arocho: 27th-round pick of the Dodgers in 2017, .594 career OPS at Double-A, four PAs at Triple-A
• RF Jake Thompson: Undrafted, .663 OPS with Marlins' Double-A affiliate in 2025
• 3B Tyler Miller: Ninth-round pick of the Red Sox in 2021, .619 OPS with Boston's Double-A affiliate in 2025, one hit in nine career PAs at Triple-A
• 1B Joseph Carpenter: Never played affiliated baseball
• CF Nick Lucky: 14th-round pick of the Red Sox in 2018, .488 OPS with Boston's High-A affiliate in 2024
• LF Tyler Robertson: 14th-round pick of the Padres in 2022, .311 OPS with San Diego's Double-A affiliate in 2025
• DH Marc Flores: 30th-round pick of the White Sox in 2014, hasn't played affiliated baseball since posting a .660 OPS in Rookie ball that year
• C Kevin Watson, Jr.: 18th-round pick of the Diamondbacks in 2017, never reached Double-A in four professional seasons
• SS Jalen Battles: Fifth-round pick of the Rays in 2022, .469 OPS across Tampa's Double-A and Triple-A affiliates in 2025

Of the nine, only five of them had any meaningful experience above Single-A — and exactly none of them had meaningful experience beyond Double-A. I don't want to pile on here; none of these guys asked for this sort of attention, and all of them are better at baseball than I'll ever be at anything. But this is the caliber of competition we're talking about here: Hitters who washed out in the low Minors, most of whom haven't played affiliated baseball in years.

And we're supposed to care that Bauer mowed through them ... why, exactly? Because he posts a lot on the internet? Because he won the NL Cy Young Award six years ago while throwing just 73 innings? Because the worst people you know have made him (with his enthusiastic approval, mind you) into a cudgel in their never-ending culture war?

Bauer was a very good pitcher once upon a time. But that was a while ago, and we have an abundance of evidence at this point that, at age 35, he doesn't belong anywhere near a Major League mound. Dominating a group of players who aren't currently good enough to even hold onto a low-Minors roster spot doesn't change that.

Trevor Bauer isn't in MLB because he isn't good enough

Prior to his foray into independent ball, Bauer was overseas with Japan's Yokohama Bay Stars. Across 21 appearances last season, he pitched to a 4.41 ERA — one of the worst marks among all qualified starters in a league where the average team ERA was 2.97. He struggled so much that he was eventually sent down to the Minors, and the team decided to let him go over the winter.

Forget everything else about Bauer's history and his resume. Is it really a surprise that a pitcher who couldn't hang in NPB — the second-best league in the world, no doubt, but one more in line with Triple-A than the Majors — failed to attract any interest from big-league teams? That makes perfect sense from here even if there were no off-field considerations whatsoever, and the fact that Bauer pitched well for seven innings against an indy ball team hardly moves the needle in the other direction.

Of course Bauer's MLB career was cut short for reasons that had nothing to do with his ability to pitch. At this point, though, it's time to give it a rest: Bauer is simply not a Major League-caliber pitcher at 35 years old, and no amount of tweeting or publicity stunts is going to convince anyone who matters otherwise.

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