Cleveland Indians: Trevor Bauer Sustains Hand Injury While Repairing Drone

The Cleveland Indians remain snakebitten, as yet another starting pitcher has suffered an injury.

No way of knowing what exactly the Cleveland Indians did to so thoroughly anger the baseball gods, but the hits just keep on coming. The Tribe announced on Friday afternoon that Trevor Bauer, who was slated to start Game Two of the American League Championship Series against the Toronto Blue Jays at Progressive Field on Saturday, had sustained a laceration on the pinky finger of his pitching hand that required stitches.

According to a report by Zach Meisel of cleveland.com, the injury occurred on Thursday night while Bauer was making repairs to one of his drones.

Bauer’s start has been pushed back to Game Three of the ALCS, which will take place at the Rogers Centre in Toronto on Monday. Josh Tomlin, the original Game Three starter, will now pitch Game Two. Staff ace Corey Kluber, as scheduled, will go in Friday night’s Game One.

Cleveland came into the playoffs already thin in the starting rotation after having lost both Danny Salazar and Carlos Carrasco to injuries in September.

The news is less than shocking to Indians’ fans, who have come to view Bauer and his drones as quirky and entertaining. During a midseason road trip to Kansas City, the 25-year old got one of his drones stuck in a tree in a public park and required assistance from Royals’ personnel to retrieve it.

Depending upon the severity of the laceration, this could prove to merely be a distraction for the Tribe prior to opening the series with the Blue Jays. Bauer is as fierce a competitor as the club has, so unless his finger were to fall off, it’s unlikely he would allow himself to miss the biggest start of his career.

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At the end of the day, it appears Bauer is still going to pitch and compete, it just won’t happen until Monday now. While his timing for engaging in drone repairs that carry the danger of such an injury occurring is curious, Cleveland fans will undoubtedly just chalk it up to Trevor being Trevor. Let’s hope his Indians teammates do the same.