Is it even worth anybody's time to follow former Dodger Trevor Bauer anymore?

The Yokohama BayStars' plan to drum up interest with the acquisition of Trevor Bauer hasn't yet worked out for either party. Bauer was at the forefront of a misconstrued controversy with a teammate over his sword celebration a few weeks back.

Now, he's gotten rocked so badly in NPB that the BayStars sent him back down to the Japanese minor leagues for a tune-up start. Across his first three starts with the NPB club, Bauer logged just 15 innings and owned an 8.40 ERA and 1.877 WHIP. He walked just two batters, but surrendered five home runs.

Very obviously not sustainable, but also not shocking, considering Bauer hadn't pitched in such high-stakes contests since June of 2021.

But what can you do? Bauer handled minor-league hitting in his first three outings before getting the call. What's another stint against lower competition going to do?

Ah, yes, give the folks on Twitter another potential viral moment to toy with. Though Bauer ended up with a respectable outing, the first batter he faced in the minors after being sent down last week went deep off of him.

Former Dodgers RHP Trevor Bauer continues to struggle in Japan

Absolute bomb. He's now allowed six home runs in seven total outings overseas. He would eventually settle down and allow only that one earned run and seven additional hits while striking out 10 across six innings, but it's not like anybody's opinion changed based on the ending.

Any clippable moment like this will have folks all over social media dragging Bauer because of how his MLB career all but officially ended. Funny enough, the last time he pitched, there wasn't yet a sticky stuff ban, so fans are also wondering if that's playing a role in his struggles, in addition to the long layoff.

Which now finally leads us to our main point: is it even worth tracking Bauer's progress anymore? Is it worth your energy to seek out his failures and magnify them? Will his eventual successes even matter? That same crowd will do their best to make sure nobody hears about those when they happen.

The man is out of MLB and probably won't be coming back, if we're to believe the assertions from several anonymous baseball executives. Shouldn't that be enough? Perhaps him withering away without constant press is the end result we didn't know we needed.