Vasgersian: Not first time someone hasn’t vibed with Montero
It’s no secret that Arizona Diamondbacks catcher Miguel Montero didn’t take to pitcher Trevor Bauer last season as well as most baseball fans did. With his unorthodox warm-up style and refusal to submit to his catcher’s pitch calls, Bauer certainly rubbed Montero the wrong way.
At Saturday’s Diamondbacks’ Fan Fest, Montero admitted he had some issues with the young phenom in 2012, saying Bauer refused to listen to him.
Wednesday, Bauer posted a rap song online titled, “You Don’t Know Me”, responding to claims made by the Arizona backstop with lyrics such as, “You hide behind a mask to facilitate a task, but you don’t know me.”
The war of words between the two athletes led MLB Network’s Matt Vasgersian to chime in on Arizona Sports 620’s Burns and Gambo about the situation. Vasgersian told the show the D-backs should have seen warning signs of Bauer’s “what you see is what you get” persona before signing him last year.
“Trevor Bauer put out there this is what I am, this is who I am and I’m not going to change, so draft with that in mind,” he said. “The Diamondbacks did, and when he refused to change, as he said he wasn’t going to, there was a problem with that.”
Vasgersian said Montero has had issues in the D-backs’ clubhouse before.
“This isn’t the first time that a pitcher or somebody involved with the D-backs organization hasn’t vibed with Montero,” Vasgersian said. “There was the whole philosophy when he was a younger catcher, when he was splitting time with Chris Snyder that Bob Melvin, who was the manager then, preferred Snyder’s game calling to Montero’s. Again, his prerogative, as an ex-big league catcher and as the guy who managed the team at the time he felt more comfortable with Snyder.
“Now that Montero is a little older, the roles are reversed and I guess Miguel Montero feels that he should be the guy that should be deferred to in situations where there’s a young pitcher.”
With reports that the song was recorded last December, well before Montero spoke out, Vasgersian said it only makes the drama more interesting in the midst of a media flurry around the two.
“The whole thing, it’s been good for business as we like to say because it’s really fascinating to talk about and if this rap song in fact was recorded before Montero made the comments… at Fan Fest last weekend, then it’s really interesting, then it tells you it’s really been burning for a while,” he said.
