"Kids are excited about Steph Curry, not Mike Trout" - Trevor Bauer calls out MLB's lack of attention to entertainment side

Despite the controversial nature of his game, Trevor Bauer's on-field antics and off-field comments have brought a lot of steam and attention. That added to the entertainment value of the sport, something the former Cy Young winner feels is missing from baseball.

Trevor Bauer, on the Wealthy Way podcast with Ryan Pineda, said about how all the other leagues stressed on the entertainment quotient to grow their game. He compared Stephen Curry's popularity to Mike Trout's in the last decade and feels because of NBA's clever usage of social media and other entertainment services, Curry and other basketball stars benefitted.

"Now it's at the point where, yeah, you have to be good enough competitively, but you also have to learn how to do the entertainment side, otherwise it's just going to lose out to other sports that do that," Trevor Bauer said (22:30).

"NBA was kind of first, they started delivering content to people where the people were on social media. Yeah, Steph Curry would throw a meaningless bounce pass in an All-Star game and it have two million views eight minutes later.

"All these different Twitter accounts, all these Instagram accounts were reposting it. Mike Trout makes this crazy, like, robs a home run, climbs the wall, this catch like I've never seen before, you can't find it anywhere. And it's like, you know, what's the difference? Like no one sees that then, so the kids are excited about Steph and they're not excited about Mike. Yeah, it's a travesty."

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Following Trevor Bauer's words, can baseball still be considered a "dying sport"?

While Trevor Bauer's words are significant in the landscape of growing individual names in either sport, in comparison, baseball isn't dwindling with popularity as many claim for it to have. For the longest time, it was America's favorite pastime, before football took over and with the rise of basketball, it has been locked in battle for supremacy of the second spot.

When compared to the NBA-NHL's, the MLB's 162-game slate, double that of its counterparts has brought in more revenue and viewership. Fans are still locked in to the sport because of its everyday nature. On the other hand, recent rise of rivalries and stars have also aided the MLB's popularity.

The first two games of the Dodgers-Yankees World Series brought in more than 14 million average viewership, but the NBA Finals haven't reached that mark since 2019. Players like Shohei Ohtani and Juan Soto have become household phenomenons. While basketball has the better global reach, the MLB is carefully tapping into the East Asian and Carribean markets to grow the sport.