Sandy Alderson wonders if Mets are better off without Trevor Bauer

The New York Mets were spurned at the last minute by Trevor Bauer, who instead opted to join the Los Angeles Dodgers. Now that that’s over, the Mets are wondering if that will turn out to be a blessing in disguise.

Mets GM Sandy Alderson confessed the team may have been naive to think it could have managed Bauer’s social media activity and said he might be even happier with where the team’s roster ended up after Bauer rejected them.

“We thought we could manage it. And maybe that was naive. We’ll see,” Alderson said of Bauer’s social media activity, via Ronald Blum of the Associated Press. “But look, we’re very happy with the roster we have, and I’m not here to say, wow, we dodged a bullet. I’m here to say we made an effort. We thought he would help our team. We understood what the risks were associated with some of the social media stuff. We actually had discussions internally with group or groups in our organization to talk about that, including women.

“And so I was happy with where we ended up, and he made a choice. And now maybe I’m even happier with where we ended up, given the fact that we were able to add someone like Taijuan Walker and others.”

Bauer is known for his Twitter presence as much as he’s known for his pitching, sometimes for negative reasons. The reigning Cy Young winner recently got into it on social media with Noah Syndergaard. In a 2019 incident, Bauer was also accused of harassing a female college student on Twitter.

Bauer is an elite pitcher, and the Mets would have been better off with him in their rotation. The silver lining for them might be that things might be a bit less dramatic off the field without him.