Trevor Bauer Gets Start Pushed Back Because He Was Playing with One of His Drones

Late night rescue mission was a success!! Welcome back little guy! Visiting clubhouse staff is pic.twitter.com/0cx0616w07
— Trevor Bauer (@BauerOutage) July 19, 2016

Last week, the Wall Street Journal had a story about Cleveland Indians pitcher Trevor Bauer's favorite hobby, which included the phrase "Bauer is almost certainly baseball's best drone builder." So, he's not only into flying drones, but he builds his own. Before we go any further into the injury issue—keep your pants on, he's fine, he's just having his start pushed back one game, alright?—can we talk about drones? Like, what exactly are they? And how are they distinguishable from, say, remote control airplanes? Is it just because "drone" sounds cooler in a more sci-fi way? I thought drones were just supposed to be utilitarian and, like, bring us stuff from Amazon.

For more background on drones, we consult the Journal:

Then in 2013, he saw a video of drones racing, and it reminded him of one of his favorite scenes in Star Wars on the planet Endor, where Luke and Leia Skywalker use speeders to escape stormtroopers in a forest.

"I was like, 'That looks awesome, I've got to learn how to do that,'" Bauer said. "So I just started researching it and taught myself about it and how to do it and how to build them."

It's a complex task that, even in 2016, can't be done with just a laptop. Drone builders learn over time to analyze wiring patterns while understanding transmission issues that cause highly intelligent and trained engineers to lose their minds and do something crazy—like turn on a baseball game.

"It would be very, very hard for the average person to just jump in and do it," said Matt Waite, a professor at Nebraska who founded the school's drone journalism lab.

It's difficult to pinpoint the wildest part of those four paragraphs, but "drone journalism lab" is a strong contender.

Anyway, Bauer has personally made nine drones—play ball!—and it's possible they've turned on him because the team just announced that he suffered a cut to his right pinky while repairing one of them last night, and it was such a bad cut, he needed stitches. He was originally scheduled to start Game 2 in Cleveland on Saturday, but he will now take the hill on Monday in Toronto for Game 3. Josh Tomlin, will switch from Game 3 to Game 2, and Corey Kluber remains tonight's Game 1 starter.

Hopefully for Cleveland, Bauer's injury remains only a minor scheduling inconvenience because they've had a pretty rough go of things, losing both Danny Salazar and Carlos Carasco to injury late in the season. Salazar could be back if the Indians make the World Series—manager Terry Francona didn't sound optimistic about his chances of pitching in the ALCS—but Carasco is done for the year.

[Cleveland.com]