Last night was Trevor Bauer’s Double-A debut with the Mobile Bay Bears, the Arizona Diamondbacks affiliate in the Southern League. Bauer was the third overall pick in the 2011 draft out of UCLA. He was the second Bruins pitcher taken in the first round, with overall No. 1 Gerrit Cole (a former New York Yankee draftee) going to the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Bauer is very unique in that he has an unorthodox delivery (similar to Tim Lincecum’s), works extremely hard at his craft, using a variety of different training programs (created by himself) to build up his arm and his durability. He uses a six-foot long tube to strengthen his arm, runs agility drills, doesn’t lift weights and long tosses almost 400 feet – every day.

He also crow hops his first warm up pitch every inning. Beginning from behind the mound and ending up in front of the mound throwing as hard as he can to the catcher, Bauer releases a fastball where reports have this “first pitch” at well above 100 MPH.

But most of all, Bauer THINKS the game, trying to come up with ways to improve his performance.

I love the guy and have become a fan of the Diamondbacks.

Sunday night was a combination of two different games. One was over before the second one began.

Jason Marquis, a new pickup for the Diamondbacks started the major league game against the New York Mets. He was hit in the shin with a line drive, and doing his best Bob Gibson impersonation*, pitched into the next inning with a broken leg.

*On July 15^th,1967 Roberto Clemente hit a line drive off Gibson’s right leg just above the ankle. Gibson pitched to three more batters before him, too, collapsed on the mound when his fibula snapped. Gibby came back less than two months later and threw three complete game victories over the Boston Red Sox in the 1967 World Series.

Later Sunday night, Bauer made his first Double-A start. He threw five innings, allowing five hits (two infield hits), walking one while striking out eight.

Marquis is obviously going to be out for the season, a shame for a pitcher who had post season pitching experience on a team full of young hurlers (Kennedy, Daniel Hudson and Josh Collmenter) who have very few post season innings. Only the 30 year old Joe Saunders has any post season experience.

Last night, while most of the national pundits were sifting through the pitchers who have cleared waivers to see who the Diamondbacks might be able to get to fill Marquis’ spot, I stated on my Twitter account (directly to ESPN’s Buster Olney) that Bauer made his Double-A debut and will be the internal feed for the major league team.

Arizona already has an in-house talent who is better than any of the other waived options.

There is no doubt in my mind that, if the Diamondbacks make the post season, Bauer will on the Diamondbacks post season roster. As part of his deal, Bauer is already on the 40 man roster.

But since he is starting at Double-A, and coupled with Marquis’ injury, Bauer might not just be late inning help in relief.

Bauer could be part of the Diamondbacks post season rotation.

The five shutout innings Bauer threw Sunday night are on top of the nine innings he threw in High-A. Add in the 137 innings at UCLA this year and Bauer has already thrown 151 innings this season on three levels. I do not believe that Arizona and GM Kevin Towers are worried about Bauer’s excessive innings. They are looking to change the pitching culture back to pitchers throwing the ball more often.

The “there are only so many bullets in the chamber” theory is slowly being thrown out the door.

Bauer’s 137 innings at UCLA this year included nine straight complete games to finish his season, and only one of those contests saw Bauer throw LESS THAN 130 pitches!

Yet, Joe Girardi removed Phil Hughes after 96 pitches the only day when he was pitching well against the Tampa Bay Rays. It’s a wonder why Hughes, and Joba, and many other Yankee pitchers (Ian Kennedy) never have fully developed under the Yankees and Girardi.

Sorry, but had to get that Yankee dig in some point in this piece. If you have read any of my stuff over the last few years, you would know I am completely against pitch counts, innings limits and all that other workload crap. Let the kids throw the ball! Pitching health is all about training and proper throwing mechanics. If you throw the ball with bad mechanics, you will get hurt.

If the completely babied Stephen Strasburg and his subsequent Tommy John surgery did not make a convincing argument that pitch counts and innings limits are ineffective, then maybe Trevor Bauer and what the Diamondbacks are letting happen will.

So around 10 PM Sunday night when I sent Olney my tweet, not more than a few minutes later he tweeted, “The D-Backs will get some help at some point from the minors with their pitching: Tonight, Trevor Bauer went 5 IP 5H 0 ER 1 BB 8 Ks in AA.”

No RT from Olney about my comment, who two months ago likely didn’t know Trevor Bauer from Jack Bauer, the fictional Counter Terrorism agent from the hit TV show 24.

And that is not unusual about the mainstream media. Most don’t have a single unique thought when it comes to what they write. If you look at Olney’s daily article, it is usually a main portion about a topic everyone already knows about and then a collection of links.

Pretty lazy stuff if you ask me.

I know that the mainstream guys need to fill stuff every day, and that it could be a chore to find fresh news every day, but to literally steal information from someone without giving proper credit is just lazy.

And it is not the first time Olney has taken one of my ideas and run with it on his own. Back in late April of 2010, I wrote this piece about David Wright and his fear at the plate after getting beaned by Matt Cain in late 2009. I noticed that Wright was bailing out and said this could affect his career.

Then after one of my readers noticed this piece on May 11, 2010 by Buster on his EPSN blog, the reader alerted me to the glaring similarities. Olney uses the guise of “scouts are noticing” to detail his piece which goes on the include walks and strikeout rates before and after the beaning.

This just goes to shows how most of the mainstream media may have many more contacts in the industry, but don’t have all the ideas. Most ideas come from independent thinkers who go against the grain, and are not worried what others think of their methodology.

Independent thinking and changing the norm is what began the sabermetric movement and why this website was created by Mike Silva, a nice combination of baseball and media content. Independent thinking is also what the Diamondbacks are doing with Trevor Bauer, going against the grain of innings caps, throwing programs and how to treat young pitchers.

Arizona’s hierarcy decided that Bauer is best served doing what he already does and are not interfering with his self-created training programs.

If Arizona makes the post season, Bauer could be a major factor in helping the Diamondbacks advance.

Then Buster Olney will write a feature about him, well after everyone already knows about Trevor Bauer.

Joseph Delgrippo is an aspiring sportswriter and TV baseball analyst. He played NCAA baseball, at tiny Marietta (OH) College, participating in the Division 3 World Series. In addition, he's coached baseball at the high school level. His knowledge of this game goes far beyond what is shown on television.

Joseph Delgrippo

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Tags: Arizona Diamondbacks, Bob Gibson, Buster Olney, Daniel Hudson, David Wright, ESPN, Gerrit Cole, Ian Kennedy, Jason Marquis, Joe Girardi, Joe Saunders, Josh Collmenter, Matt Cain, Mobile Bay Bears, New York Mets, New York Yankees, Phil Hughes, Pittsburgh Pirates, Roberto Clemente, San Francisco Giants, St Louis Cardinals, Stephen Strasberg, Tim Lincecum, Trevor Bauer, Washington Nationals