MLB Announces a Crackdown on Foreign Substances
One of the bigger on-field stories of the 2021 season has been which pitchers are using foreign substances, and how much help they’re getting from it. Whether it’s Giovanny Gallegos and hat-gate, Gerrit Cole’s word salad about Spider Tack, or Trevor Bauer’s wildly fluctuating spin rate, what pitchers do to the ball has been a hot topic. Yesterday, the league opened a new chapter in the saga when they released a memo that details a drastically increased enforcement policy, one that promises more suspensions than seemed imaginable only a year ago.
The new rule is draconian and more or less without exception. If a pitcher is caught with foreign substances on the ball or on their person, they’ll be immediately ejected from the game. They’ll also be automatically suspended. The memo, which FanGraphs obtained a copy of, doesn’t specify a suspension length. It does tie the suspensions to the existing rules and past precedent, however, which suggests a 10-game suspension with pay for any violations, a figure the league made explicit in its press release.
“Any foreign substance” is a massive change from the way baseball is currently played. The rule is intended, at least in theory, to crack down on synthetic grip enhancers, such as Spider Tack, that create huge increases in grip strength and spin rate. Pitchers have used lower-potency grip enhancers for years; mixing sunscreen and rosin or dabbing pine tar on the fingertips are both time-tested practices.
In disallowing those practices, the league is making things easier for the umpires who will enforce the new crackdown. It’s not hard to imagine what would happen if some but not all substances were banned: a pitcher caught using a prohibited substance would claim it was instead an allowed substance. It’s not necessarily easy to distinguish Spider Tack, a viscous brown substance, from any number of other viscous brown substances. What’s a legal smudge, and what’s an illicit good? Asking umpires to make that decision every time they find anything suspicious would no doubt lead to plenty of incorrect decisions in both directions — legal substances deemed cheating and illegal substances allowed.
That doesn’t make it any easier for pitchers who have relied on relatively benign mixtures of grip-enhancing substances for years, often with the direct encouragement of their team. Tyler Glasnow blamed the partial UCL tear he recently suffered on his need to switch from sunscreen and rosin, a mixture that’s been in baseball longer than Rob Manfred has been alive, to nothing at all, in compliance with new guidance. That’s an impossible claim to verify, but the same muscles that protect the UCL are used in gripping, so it’s not completely outlandish.
Given the near-continual change in the composition of the baseball, which has at times produced rashes of blister issues across the league as pitchers attempt to grip an ever-changing surface, forcing every pitcher who used any substance at all — when Eno Sarris interviewed current and former players about the practice, the practice was considered nearly universal — to overhaul the way they pitch mid-year seems overly harsh, particularly given the league’s previous inaction. In cracking down on extreme offenders, the league might be asking for a rash of grip-related injuries.
One other concern: there’s long been a gentleman’s agreement between pitchers and hitters that low-grade grip enhancers are acceptable as a way of avoiding hit batters on poorly-gripped pitches. That arrangement wasn’t working anymore — again, some of the substances currently in use pass far beyond “grip improvement” and instead are expressly for the purpose of increasing spin — but that doesn’t mean the concern it addressed isn’t valid.
The league paid lip service to this argument in its memo, but I find their argument unconvincing. “…foreign substance use appears to be contributing to an overall decline in control because it enables a style of pitching in which pitchers sacrifice control in favor of spin and velocity,” the memo states. “The number of batters hit by pitches actually has increased as the use of foreign substances has become more prevalent… We are confident that pitchers will be able to adopt a delivery that enables them to grip and control the baseball effectively without the use of an illegal substance.”
But correlational arguments like this are nonsensical. Pitchers are hitting more batters than they used to, and strong grip-enhancing substances are increasingly prevalent, but correlation does not imply causation. There were fewer worldwide murders when dinosaurs walked the earth, but no one is suggesting bringing back stegosauruses to make the world a safer place. Claiming that grip-enhancing substances lead to more hit batters isn’t nearly that poor of an argument, and it doesn’t mean sticky stuff is reducing the number of hit batsman, but correlational arguments are weak by their very nature, even if they don’t involve dinosaurs.
In fact, the argument about what is causing an increase in hit batters is ongoing. Rob Arthur and Russell Eassom found that hitters are responsible for the rise in HBP’s through 2019. Rob Mains looked into whether rivalries affect HBP rates. And Tom Verducci and Ken Rosenthal point towards the increasing prioritization of stuff over command that comes with increased reliance on relievers.
So why is the league “confident” that pitchers will be able to adopt new deliveries mid-season, presumably without hiccups that would lead to a huge spike in hit batters? Per their memo, they talked to “numerous… accomplished current and former pitchers” and asked whether they would be able to pitch with rosin alone. That’s not enough reason to be confident in my book, particularly given that a large number of pitchers have used some amount of grip-enhancing foreign substances for decades.
That’s not to say that pitchers can’t grip the ball without illicit foreign substances. In the KBO, foreign substance use is less prevalent, yet pitchers still manage to control the ball. Umpires there are also allowed to conduct extensive pregame checks, though in practice they rarely do. Two major differences, however, make this a poor comparison. First, the KBO uses powder rosin rather than rock rosin, which functions as more of a drying agent. Second, KBO baseballs are specifically made tacky to enhance grip. MLB hasn’t been able to achieve the same effect, though they’ve tested tacky baseballs in the Atlantic League. Given that they haven’t been able to control the aerodynamics of the existing ball, however, a sudden change for the better in the major league ball seems unlikely.
And the timing of this increased enforcement doesn’t allow much time for experimentation. Perhaps most pitchers will eventually be able to find a combination of a new grip and application of the allowed rosin bag that gives them confidence in their grip while eliminating the spin-enhancing properties the league is targeting. Can they do it in seven days in the middle of the season? I’m not sure of the answer, and I doubt that pitchers are either. Those who have always used some mild form of grip enhancement will likely be starting more or less from square one.
Had this rule been announced after the end of last season, pitchers could have experimented with it in the offseason. Had the league provided some legal way of gripping the ball beyond the existing rosin bag, which many players have found insufficient for ages, the hue and cry from pitchers across the league would no doubt be less deafening. Glasnow specifically mentioned the need to change grips mid-season as a concern, and letting players figure this out in low-intensity offseason settings seems prudent for a move the league claims will increase player safety.
What’s more, implementing a new policy without first testing it means that we don’t know how effective umpires will be in policing substances. The league hasn’t publicized exactly how umpires will conduct foreign substance searches. Their memo said only that “The umpire will have the discretion to inspect the ball, as well as the pitcher’s hands, uniform, hat, glove, etc.” They did state that inspections will generally be conducted between innings, which might give enterprising players a way to get sticky early in the inning and lose it before inspection. The league might yet catch clever offenders. Starters will be checked more than once during a game, and relievers will be mandatorily checked after the end of their first inning or when they exit the game, whichever comes first. The penalty — 10 games with no replacement roster spot — is steep, which might encourage teams to self-police, as might the memo’s promise of consequences for club officials who supply substances or fail to properly deter their use. But making such a drastic in-season change — without working with the union to understand how players might react — adds to the volatility and uncertainty.
Overall, I think that this policy decision is typical of MLB in recent years: it’s heavy-handed and under-tested, and it goes to great and potentially damaging lengths to address a middling problem. If you had asked me to compile a list of the five greatest issues facing the major league game before this season, I wouldn’t have listed spin-enhancing foreign substances. Bradford William Davis of Insider did just that when rumors of an enforcement step-up first emerged, and while mine might differ in its specifics, I don’t even think excessive foreign substance use would top a list of on-field concerns. It might help tilt the balance between pitching and offense — as Devan Fink recently noted, the effect of high-spin four-seamers on run values is real — but it’s a strange time to address that after such a lengthy period of inaction on the league’s part. A pitcher would be forgiven for thinking this just wasn’t a priority because for a long time (and several seeming experiments from Trevor Bauer), it wasn’t.
That’s all academic at this point, because MLB has made the decision to step up enforcement. Starting on June 21, the new regime will be in effect. Players will likely get caught — perhaps not with the “paraffin, licorice, sand-paper, emery-paper…” specified in the official rules, but with some substance nonetheless. Some pitchers will adapt. Some will have trouble figuring it out. Offense will likely benefit if the crackdown is effective at reducing spin rates. The only thing that’s certain is that there will be a host of major leaguers figuring out how to play a substantially different game in real time.
Update: An earlier version of this article mischaracterized the frequency of checks for foreign substances in KBO games.
Ben is a writer at FanGraphs. He can be found on Bluesky @benclemens.
Article idea, perhaps more for rotographs: Pitchers most likely to be affected by lost spin. Either because they’re reliant on high-spin pitches in particular, or because they’ve seen a significant change in spin rate in the last couple of seasons.
Also, I’d like to see someone get suspended for illicit possession of licorice.
Let’s get someone on the sugar content of Twizzlers vs. Red Vines and infer how much stickiness each might provide.
Good discussion of the topic Ben. I’m here for the dinosaur analogies.
The dinosaur analogy is, sadly, wrong. Dinosaurs prevented mammals from increasing in size by eating big ones. They literally and directly prevented murder when present by eating mammals that were moving toward human size.
Didn’t the Commissioner send out a memo before the season telling Pitchers to stop using these grip enhancers? In typical MLB player behavior, they chose to ignore the rules and even seek out more effective ways to cheat. Now they have the audacity to claim they’re being victimized. What a joke.
How about this idea MLB Pitchers? Step up on the mound, grab the ball, get the sign from your Catcher, and throw a strike. Rinse and repeat until there are three outs, and stop whining that management isn’t going to enable your devious practices, which are quite simply ruining the game for fans, any longer.
This is an impressive level of bootlicking, I must say.
Bootlicker is a lazy insult
Tbf it’s also a lazy act/philosophy/way of life
Not sure I am going to get an accurate read on Scott’s way of life from two paragraphs in a comment section regarding his relationship with baseball.
Found Rob Manfred’s burner account.
In typical MLB league office behavior, they have denied or ignored that an issue even existed for as long as humanly possible, only acted when that issue got too much press for their tastes, then completely blamed the players and taken no responsibility for creating a culture that encourages the behavior.
Just like PEDs, cocaine, the Astros cheating scandal, and the rabbit ball. The league doesn’t care about how any of those things affect the game, they only care about how they might affect publicity, ticket sales, and TV revenue.
The “sticky stuff” lawsuit in Anaheim dates back to last Sept.
Theleague did nothimg.
So did the media.
Lots of handwringing about unsighed FA and even collusion, none about cheating.
Until it all exploded.
Exactly like PEDS, Apple watch, garbage cans, and stadium cams…
And whatever comes next.
Trick bats, I suppose.
Bauer tweeted something similar about the league only caring about publicity, ticket sales and TV revenue. Um, yes – what entertainment business doesn’t?
MikeS mic drop. The league always makes every effort to use the players as scapegoats.
They sent one out in Feb 2020 before the pandemic hit. Then they sent it out again in March this year to remind them (as it presumably was put in the back burner when the whole “everyone is going to die” vibes tools over).
MLB’s claim that sticky stuff has *increased* hit batsmen obviously lacks clear evidence of a causal relation. But it seems so too does the oft-cited claims that sticky stuff is a safety essential for *preventing* hit batsmen … which hasn’t stopped journalists from (frustratingly) parroting that contention as unquestioned fact. MLB’s contention seems equally plausible!
I’m a bit surprised at how many people seem to be wholeheartedly buying the idea that suddenly pitchers are going to have no control over where the ball is going.
Not all pitchers, and not in all weather conditions, but things will be ugly for a little while until they adjust.
But this is still preferable to moving the mound or lowering it. Then we really would see the ball going all over the place.
I do wonder how things will look in Colorado for instance, or in crucial playoff games in colder October nights.
My guess is there will be no discernible difference in control to the naked eye whatsoever, but every time a pitch is more than an inch outside the strike zone, wild speculation will ensue anyway. Especially for “known” tacky users like Bauer — he already throws quite a lot of wildly out of the strike zone pitches in his never-ending quest for increased spin, and now those will all be presented as “proof” that taking away the tacky is causing wildness.
Excellent point.
Personally I think there is a good chance there *is* a causal relationship between the increased use of tackier substances and increased hit batsmen.
At least three factors seem plausible to contribute: (1) pitchers’ increased confidence in a tacky grip may lead them to pitch inside more often, (2) higher variance in ultimate pitch location because of higher spin rates, and (3) in concert with the second point, and most importantly in my mind, batters now accustomed to higher-spin higher-movement pitches (e.g., curvier curves and slidier sliders) seem likely to have trained themselves into “hanging in there”, looking for potential movement, rather than go with their natural instinct to defensively bail out. Many times I see a batter hit it is because they are out over the plate looking for nasty off speed stuff and a pitcher busts a fastball inside, or they barely move on a big movement breaking pitch.
(An enterprising Fangraphs writer might think about looking into whether there is any data to show the increase in HBP can be attributed to type of pitch, a general change in pitch locations, lefty/righty combinations, spin rates, pitcher attributes, etc., including combinations of those.)
Yeah, its pretty funny that people just kind of accept that narrative. Especially when its coming from pitchers. Because its not like they could possibly have an ulterior motive for advocating for grip enhancements. its a bit like the fox saying that you dont need a fence around the chickens.
I was a pitcher in high school and college. If I can not hit people the vast majority of the time with 1/1000th the skill of a MLB player, I think they should be just fine.
This is the second move that MLB has made recently (the first being intentionally deadening the ball) where any reasonable observer can tell you will mess a lot of things up well before it happens. The policy itself is probably reasonable if implemented in February, but in the middle of the season? Is this a case where nobody is in the league office is willing to say this is a bad idea, or that someone said it and they just got ignored?
It’s not a bad idea at all. That would be your opinion, but I think the average baseball fan (to say nothing of more than half the players) think it’s great. I honestly have no clue why this objection to doing anything mid-season. Who cares when it’s done? It’s in the rule book and players should be playing by the rules. If the league suddenly discovered that a team was cheating by stealing signs or using PED’s, should they wait until the off-season to enforce it?
The only people who should like this are regression discontinuity nerds. In the long-term, it has a shot to be good although it’s probably not quite the optimal policy. In the short-term, you’re changing the product in the middle of the season. Generally when you change a product you want to see what the results are before you ship it out, and this has a very good chance of being a very weird experience for fans.
I don’t think this is like using cameras to steal signs, which was clearly against the rules, or PEDs, which was not nearly as widespread. Somewhere between 65% and 80% of pitchers are using something, even if it’s just sunscreen.
They had to. Couldn’t wait. It was this or let tgevnew ball take all the blame.
They really needed to do it in tbe off season after Bauer made his claims.
Suddenly his contract makes a whole lot of sense.
“I don’t think this is like using cameras to steal signs, which was clearly against the rules.” Love your work, oh sad one, but there is nothing ambiguous about Rule 3.01 or Rule 6.02. “This” is quite clearly against the rules.
The whole “we can’t do this in mid-season” logic seems strange to me. What is magical about doing this in spring training or even September.? We bring up skads of minor leaguers in sept and change the game. We have big salary dumps at the treads deadline, we play uneven schedules due to interleague play. We add umpires in the playoffs and it changes the game (see: infield fly rule in Atlanta ).
On top of that, the league was very clearly instructing teams in spring training to “cut it out”. I’d be interested to hear glasnow explain why he didn’t cut it out in spring training when he was told to.
I think the league acted pretty quickly once they realized how big the problem was. Good on them.
Also, obviously the big news is that they are going to change part of the game 40% of the way through the season. But an under-discussed aspect of this change is that if you want to do anything other than just outlaw all foreign substances you probably have to get the union to sign off. They can probably enforce the rules as written because it’s already on the books, but if you want to allow some substances / have an alternate testing system then that’s something new. This policy is not designed for an optimal game experience, it’s designed to avoid having to negotiate and to avoid a grievance when implemented without negotiating.
I can see why the league wants to avoid the “allow SOME substances” quagmire for reasons cited in the article. I don’t know that the umpires are well equipped to determine if the substance in use is the officially approved chemical compound, or has too much of substance X, or not enough of substance Y, on the spot.
It could potentially be useful if the league had a single accepted grip enhancer that it allowed, perhaps even one of its own creation…but again it would be very difficult to discern “this pitcher has doctored this ball with this approved substance” compared to some other illicit substance on the fly.
Shades of grey would make sense if everyone would stay within the confines of the rules, but since they can’t/won’t, it pushes into this land of black and white (or “allow all” or “ban all”, which they have now opted for).
Regardless, the timing of the change sure is rotten.
I think the only way to enforce approved substances is ball testing, and a testing system that would result in suspensions is pretty far outside the bounds of the current rules. They do know how to do this, since they’ve been testing the balls for fact-finding already. But they’ve clearly decided it’s not worth negotiating for.
Color the approved substance so it can be clearly distinguished from anything not approved.
And next thing you know, all sorts of illicits are the exact same color.
Colorimetry isn’t brain surgery.
I had both of these same thoughts within about eight seconds of each other too. 😀
“Well just color the “approved stuff” magenta! Then you know that’s what they’re using versus some viscous unidentified brown goo.”
….
“Nah, someone can make the unapproved substance in magenta with not too much effort…”
OR make the approved substance have a specific reaction (color change, bubbling, go invisible) when the umpire applies their testing substance to it! A secret substance! It can then be held up into the air, like giving him a red card in soccer, and we can watch the pitcher march shamefully off the field.
I’m clearly joking, but it shows how difficult this will be to control when there are players that will always cheat to get an edge or to stay in MLB.
#teamflubber
There already is a single accepted grip enhancer, one that the umpires can recognize when used by itself. It’s called rosin.
It’s just that, according to the article anyway, rosin alone isn’t an effective enough grip enhancer for many pitchers.
Interesting thought. I wonder if part of MLB’s thinking here is to make this a negotiating point in the new CBA. Expanding the list of allowed grip enhancers is an easy “give” for the league in exchange for something they actually care about. And now a bunch of players are up in arms and probably thinking that the union ought to do something. This might end up being a case of MLB not being as clueless as it looks at first.
I did think about this being done with the CBA as a divide and conquer tactic – I’d imagine pitchers, as a group, are pro-sticky stuff, and hitters, on the whole, are against it. So now the union has to try and come up with a unified position that will make pitchers and hitters happy while preparing for the CBA negotiation.
Also, is it a ploy to get the public on the owners side for if (when) there is a strike – painting pitchers as cheaters might put the owners in a better position, PR wise.
I’m not sure if Manfred has shown the competence though for this level of Machiavellian thinking.
He’a figurehead; somrbody in his staff might have earned a promotion.
Machiavellian but plausible.
There are no clean hands (literally) here, much as the pundits try to pretend.
(That old rookie in Chicago? I’d checking his bats.) 😀
I have no inside knowledge of this it’s hard to imagine the union making any real concessions in exchange for in-game rules like this. But also, if I were the league I would not be very excited about asking the union for stuff in the lead up to the CBA negotiations.
That was my thought. This is something they can give the players in exchange for an international draft, a true salary cap or a longer season in the form of expanded playoffs.
It shouldn’t work though. It is much, much too minor especially when compared to economic things players actually want gone like decreasing the length of team control, service time manipulations, and the qualifying offer.
Yeah I’m not buying it. In the offseason, pitchers will re-learn how to pitch without any sticky stuff and it will eventually be a non-issue. The league is the one who cares about this stuff, and the players are not giving up material benefits for this sort of a rule.
They’ll probably learn but some of those “uncommonly good” pitchers might overnight become less uncommon. Just as with PEDS.
Its actually kind of interesting that they are doing it basically half way through the season because, on paper, it should be a very noticeable way of isolating the real life effects of these substances. There is going to be a very clear delineation between “using substances” and “not using substances”. Just on the few graphs I have seen there has already been a significant decline in spin rates etc in the past couple days.
had they done it in the offseason there would be all kinds of variables that you cant really account for (namely, pitchers having a whole offseason to work around the rules) and it might mitigate or obscure the effect of this change.
Weather is changing too
Man MLB royally screws everything up huh? It’s impressive at this point. Deaden the ball, then blame pitchers when offense goes down. MLB has done everything in their power to screw players and I, for one, would welcome a lockout just to see the owners squirm. I’m sick of the players being taken advantage of every step of the way. Player salaries are being suppressed and there is mass collusion. Thinking back to what Pete Alonso said about MLB changing the ball to suppress salaries, they don’t need the ball to suppress salaries, they’ll just collude to keep salaries down. MLB players have said that when they get an offer a lot times, they’ll flood in and they’ll be about the same amount in terms of $.
I’m beyond frustrated as a fan. They have implemented a harsh luxury tax system, draft slots/IFA caps, play with the baseball every year, etc. and the players have gotten nothing in particular in return. They couldn’t even get player benefits taken out of the luxury tax calculation… which is just so dumb.
With the baseball, yes, it’s gotten out of hand. But to do this at about the ~40% mark of the season is malpractice. Glasnow might’ve gotten hurt over this. What really bothers me about this whole thing is that offense normally goes up in the summer months. So when offense inevitably goes up (it already has), MLB will point to the banning of sticky substances. Oh well.
Sadly, I think you might see more players squirming and crying uncle before you did the owners. Owners tend to have unfettered access to capital markets and near-unlimited debt financing to ride the storm, and/or could sell at a handsome profit if things got too tight for them.
Yeah, the players will definitely squirm WAY more. I’m just sick of the owners taking the players to the cleaners every CBA.
Not to mention Disney and all other sports entertainment media to spread their message
They burn the world, tell us there is a plan, most applaud and call it good efficient business
If you’re beyond frustrated with MLB, I highly recommend supporting your local college, high school or Little League team.
Volunteering can be even better: amidst my 1st year as a Little League coach (& without a child as a player) I am enjoying —even loving—the game more than ever while less & less concerned with whatever MLB is doing that I am not bothering to pay money to watch.
Great points. I actually coach a youth basketball team and volunteer at other places related to my profession. I don’t know if I’ll have time to fit any baseball related stuff in there. My local college team is actually quite good (they were playing last week), but it’s hard to keep up with amateurs.
As long as you’re a “let’s enjoy the day and have fun” coach and not a “trying to relive my childhood / disappointed that I never made varsity / scream at 7-year-olds” kind of coach, amen. There’s high comedy to be had from kids running past first all the way to the foul pole, Timmy eating grass and chasing butterflies in the outfield, and that 4-foot dribbler turning into a home run.
The lack of upvotes for this makes me wonder if MLB astroturfs here.
If bringing back dinosaurs makes the world a safer place, hiring Tony LaRussa to manage a team on the south side of Chicago makes a lot more sense.
Just neighing.
I’m just as skeptical of MLB as the next guy, but I think the criticism in the article and many of the comments is too much. It’s ok to admit that people we don’t like do some things right sometimes.
MLB has a clear, longstanding rule with stated penalties. It has, in fact, enforced that rule at times in the past. But the truth of rules in any setting is that they typically don’t get enforced until 1) people start breaking them, and 2) others start complaining about people breaking them. That’s where we are now (as Ben notes, the gentlemen’s agreement has been shattered) and so it isn’t particularly surprising or nefarious that the crackdown would begin. In fact, MLB told all teams in the offseason that they would be reviewing and enforcing, so you can’t even complain players weren’t warned.
I guess I just struggle to find sympathy for people who cheat and then want to complain when they are told that they are going to start being held accountable for their cheating. It’s always been against the rules and they’ve always known that (there is a reason why they go to great lengths to conceal their sticky substances). Glasnow and others can complain that now they can’t throw 100 without hurting themselves, to which I say, I can’t score 100 on every exam without cheating either.
So why didn’t they do anything after the stick stuff mess in Anaheim last Sept?
It is exactly like PEDS. They ignored it until they couldn’t. PEDS made offense a joke, sticky stuff makes pitching…questionable.
The fact that the league knew about sticky substance abuse for years and didn’t do anything is a straw man. The league did nothing for years because they were hoping the problem would either go away on its own never reach the general public audience. It didn’t go away, and in the last month, the Athletic and Sports Illustrated ran cover stories about it featuring quotes from bona fide stars like JT Realmuto and Josh Donaldson. That basically forced the league’s hand, which is why they’re acting now.
You don’t have to be a Rob Manfred fan or love the way the commissioner’s office behaves to see that this crackdown was overdue and necessary. A subset of players and teams have taken things way too far, and hitters like Realmuto and Donaldson have decided they’re sick of it and are willing to go public with their (justified, imo) grievances.
Sorry, go away or reach the public? The public has known forever, I’ve been aware my whole life as a first gen fan. This wasn’t some big dark secret
Of course you knew, anyone who cares enough about stats to have an account on FanGraphs.com almost certainly knew. That isn’t the “public” audience that MLB was concerned about. The majority of baseball fans have never heard of FanGraphs or BaseballSavant, and are only vaguely aware of what Statcast data is because A-Rod and John Smoltz sometimes use it as a punch line.
Those kinds of fans know who Ken Rosenthal is and what Sports Illustrated is, so if they’re writing about sticky stuff, then it will finally start penetrating a wider audience. That is what Rob Manfred hoped to avoid. For the last few years, it has been just people like us in the FanGraphs comment section talking about sticky stuff and spin rate, and we are such a small subset of baseball’s overall fandom that Rob Manfred doesn’t (and shouldn’t, tbh) care what we talk about.
Trevor Bauer’s noise about it a few years back wasn’t good enough?
Nope. The majority of the US population isn’t on Twitter at all, so even though it was kind of a big deal on Twitter, it totally missed the mainstream sports discussion. Also Bauer’s previous antics worked against him – even though he was obviously correct and just pointing out public data with Cole, he had a history of being kind of a jerk on Twitter, so a lot of people were willing to accept the framing of the story that Bauer was just jealous of his old college roommate and stirring stuff up.
@fjtorres, my answer to your question is, 1) there was an insufficient mass of public scrutiny, and 2) with limited administrative resources to allocate, they believed that other problems were of more pressing concern. I think this is actually really different from PEDs. PEDs were making baseball more exciting for the casual fan, which gave MLB perverse incentives to compromise their values and the game’s integrity and look the other way. Sticky stuff makes the game more boring to the casual fan, which means it aligns with MLB’s interests to crack down on it.
They didn’t crack down before because it hadn’t broken through as a big enough problem for them to prioritize it. Every workplace has these issues. At the risk of angering the analogy police, I will try my hand (while avoiding dinosaurs):
The office rules clearly state that you can chat at the watercooler for up to 7 minutes (rosin), but nobody actually cares if you chat for 10 minutes (sunscreen), until that one guy starts hanging out for 30 minutes and making it harder for others to do their jobs (Spider Tack). Unfortunately, to crack down on him, the supervisor has to enforce the 7-minute rule, which is annoying for everybody.
Pretty much exactly my feelings. I wonder how much of this is about people being pre-determined to bash anything Manfred does.
Fess up. How many of you are owner shills trying to astroturf? Never seen this kind of pro-owner BS on here. That it appears now, all of a sudden, is highly suspect.
You got me. I am August Busch VII. Dagnabit.
Is it “pro-owner” to not feel bad about cheaters getting caught cheating? You people crying foul that the league did this midseason, or never cracked down on it before, you all sound like player agents.
Imagine siding with billionaires who actively make the game worse over players who are trying to make a living and are the ACTUAL product.
The owners give less than a rip about what 25 or so people are talking about on Fangraphs.
If you think there’s 25 people here (even in the comments section), I’ve got a bridge to sell you. Teams do a lot to sway public perception.. why wouldn’t they comment on social media and blogs? Not saying they do or don’t, but to act like it isn’t within the realm of possibility is foolish.
Nonsense.
MLB–and every org with too much power–selectively enforces the rules. Always. Why blame players when MLB spent decades ignoring substances, doing selective enforcement, not enforcing their own new standards (the ones mentioned before this season), only to suddenly make insanely radical changes mid-season?
I’m not blaming players. To the contrary, I think my position stands up for the many players who aren’t cheating and are tired of being taken advantage of by those who are (as many different articles and interviews on this topic have publicly laid bare). It’s an impoverished worldview that believes that fair rules only matter if they are strictly policed. In fact, it’s exactly the type of outlook that results in announcements like we saw yesterday.
Also, let’s note that there are quite a few players who went well beyond the ‘Gentlemen’s Agreement’ of pine tar or sunscreen. Players are going too far cheating, and owners are overreacting in the opposite direction, it’s entirely predictable.
They told them before the 2020 season. It just got back burnered when the pandemic hit. Pitchers crying foul now can pound sand.
It’s getting to the point where I love baseball but hate the organization that is responsible for its highest level of performance. Somebody somewhere please get the indie leagues going and get ready for the next labor dispute. I’m ready to pick a favorite indie league team.
It is not clear whether by “the organization that is responsible for its highest level of performance” you are referring to Driveline Baseball or the company that created Statcast.
Astroturfing.
Later giving way, inevitably, irrevocably, inexorably, to Enronturfing and MinuteMaidParkturfing.
I don’t think there’s any issue with announcing this mid-season. What I’m more confused about is why MLB didn’t also come out with a standard-issue grip enhancer for all the pitchers in the league to use. If it’s relatively known that something like sunscreen and rosin, or pine tar, is used like this without really leading to anything funny happening with spin rate, couldn’t they just provide pitchers with league-approved grip enhancers?
If there’s some worry that players will do something funny to whatever they provide, they can just make sure the substance is maintained by the umpires and given out when a pitcher goes to the mound, and make sure it never leaves the field of play.
This was explained. Umpires would have no way to tell whether a substance being used was the authorized (mildly effective) one or an unauthorized (highly effective) one, so could not effectively enforce any substance use. So you would be de facto allowing any substance to be used — as long as it was hidden effectively, and we know the players have that skill down to an art. They would even have a new arrow in their quiver – pretending to apply the authorized substance while actually applying the super-substance.
I mean Trevor Bauer literally gave a full breakdown on an idea that would do exactly what I’m talking about. There’s gotta be some middle ground here. What MLB is doing right now is entirely too heavy-handed.
I fear there is no middle ground. Not sure what you are referring to with Bauer, but I just do not think whatever it is will work. Half measures simply will not be effective on this issue. You either have to allow it all Wild West style, or get draconian in enforcement to the point that enforcing it becomes weaved into the fabric of the game.
Neither is particularly attractive, which is why MLB was willing to not make that choice, until hitters started publicly making an issue out of it and failure to address it interfered with the efforts to get more balls into play for an improved fan viewing experience.
There is a standard-issue grip enhancer for all the pitchers in the league to use: rosin. They even leave a little bag of it on the mound.
And if rosin is truly inadequate in today’s game (I have no opinion there), they could probably leave a little bag of some other agreed-upon substance on the mound.
I’m always amazed at all the sanctimonious fans that suddenly pop up to bemoan cheating whenever the MLB brings it to their attention that something they didn’t care about for a century is now suddenly important. I’m sure they’ve been beating their trash can about the horrors of rosin and sunscreen for years, right?
Anyway, I think there’s a good argument to limiting certain synthetic grip substances to tip the balance between offense and pitching, but there is zero reason to implement a change in enforcement on this scale in the middle of the season. No one cared about it being against the rules for years and I refuse to believe the MLB suddenly grew a conscience about it. The only explanation I can come up with is that they are desperate to deflect from the consequences of whatever they did to the ball this year and this is a good a scapegoat as any.
“The only explanation I can come up with is that they are desperate to deflect from the consequences of whatever they did to the ball this year and this is a good a scapegoat as any.”
I doubt they are desperate to deflect from that at all. By all accounts, the ball engineering has worked well for one of its two goals – increased drag on the ball has reduced the distance fly balls travel, reducing number of home runs.
It has not worked so well for the other goal — reducing strike outs to increase number of balls in play. The main factor in that seems to be that the increased drag also makes the ball more susceptible to being thrown with harder to hit high spin rates. Greatly exacerbating that issue is that pitchers, now armed with both Statcast/Trackman data and increasingly higher tech tacky substances, have put on their scientist lab coats to figure out how to take advantage and increase spin rates.
MLB has three non-drastic ways (i,e., ways that do not fundamentally alter the game, such as changing mound height or game dimensions) it can try to combat that: one (taking away the data) is basically impossible and probably ineffective anyway, one (further engineering the ball) is really difficult to get right and takes a lot of time and further experimentation, and one (enforcing the rules barring foreign substances) is relatively easy to try, and a lot of players have been clamoring for it anyway.
It is a pretty easy decision for them as to what to try, and they have done it. No conspiracy or scapegoating theories necessary.
“one (further engineering the ball) is really difficult to get right and takes a lot of time and further experimentation”
Yea and they probably should’ve spent more time on it before they put this new ball in because whatever you think they clearly didn’t want the worst hitting environment since the 60s. If enforcing the substance rule was so obvious and easy then they should’ve put this memo out in January.
It’s not 100% clear to me that the new ball is the cause of the batting average reduction this year – less HRs, yeah, less batting average, not sure. Don’t forget that the DH was in use last year so a lot less pitcher hitting. This season’s batting average may simply be a continuation of the trend caused by the increase in use of tacky substances and pitchers’ continuing to use Statcast/Trackman data to engineer effective pitches.
They put out the memo in 2020 and repeated it in 2021.
What a coincidence all these “scandals” based around things done for over a century are coming up as we get closer to a new CBA. This stuff is wack – give me all the steroids, sign stealing, corked bats, and sticky fingers. All this is is the owners setting the new landscape for the next CBA, one in which they get to lie, cheat, and steal while everyone else is monitored under their rules. The sanctimony for sports is so insane here, meanwhile like a dozen companies own the world, no one has healthcare or real food or water, and white collar criminals have free reign to dominate and destroy the lives of billions to set up their dumb families for generations
Between this and the pandemic leap to 162, expect a nice little spike in pitcher arm injuries that will be dismissed and ignored because they’re entitled and our lords above and their minions and shills or even gen pop aren’t. Players will adjust as best they can but between this and the blossoming NCAA relationship we may get more pre-injured pitchers than ever, for which the blame will be placed on how weak and entitled pitchers are…It’s insane to watch engineering like this done to serve so few and all mostly to applause
That said I actually agree with this:
“foreign substance use appears to be contributing to an overall decline in control because it enables a style of pitching in which pitchers sacrifice control in favor of spin and velocity,” the memo states.”
and do think players will make as many adjustments as possible. Certain orgs (coughCubs) are already thinking about this with more focus on non-velocity – like EL says they can improve that pretty relatively easy – pitcher skills. Problem is the gd NCAA is looming, salivating even for when they take over the MiLs
It’s a little bit of that, and it’s also because we’re selecting for pitchers who throw hard and who have crazy breaking stuff. Look at every bullpen. Every bullpen has a couple guys who throws upper 90s. 10 years ago there were much fewer.
The dinosaur analogy is staggeringly dumb. If you knew it was that poor, why make it?
I’m tired of pitchers cheating, and games becoming more and more boring. Again, they’re cheating. Concentrate on that, and leave the analogies to people with a bit more skill at them.
Any other molehills you’d like to make mountains out of?
This could be said in a more tactful way, but it is not wrong.
All analogy is suspect.
Let’s be real here. The problem is the shift I’m not proposing to eliminate it, but perhaps it should be limited in some way. Perhaps the SS has to stay on the left side, 2B on the right side?
That is literally eliminating the shift.
The shift is not even close to being the problem, and I can never understand why there is an appetite for eliminating or limiting what might be the single most interesting thing about the game today.
How is the shift interesting? I have never watched a baseball game and gotten jazzed about the SS playing on the right side of the infield. Defensive positioning might be interesting to analyze, but it’s not interesting at all as a viewer of the action. On the other hand it is annoying when a lefty hitter does everything right and lines a ball that’s grabbed easily by an extra player hanging out in shallow right field. Or when a hitter is badly fooled and hits a weak dribbled the other way and no one is there to field it. Sport is fun when you are rewarded for difficult feats, like hitting a line drive or 105 mph grounder between 1b and 2b. And of course the shift and the corresponding focus on lifting the ball and hitting balls over the shift has had a huge impact on strikeout rates.
Hit to the opposite field. Lots of younger players are managing to figure it out and it’s not draining their power. Adapt or get replaced.
I tend to agree as the shift puts more power in the hands of management at all levels and eliminate athleticism and skill. It’s just
more NFLization of the MLB, and I’m forever weirded out by this willingness to allow these kind of transitions so thoughtlessly and easily. We f’n love being managed in the new new world and calling it Freedom
or Strategy, whatever gets it through
Yo…I’m crazy af but also I really believe this stuff lol
Ben had some good points about how this was not the optimal way to introduce this rule.
That said, well, things are spiraling down pretty quickly in terms of the product. This is a pretty good way to address it. There are other things that they can and in my opinion should do, but this problem has really emerged big time this year and I think that MLB should be praised for trying to address it in real time. A 70% (my arbitrary grade for this) is better than a 0%.
Pretty interesting take. Glasnow says he used a mix of sunscreen/rosin (whether you want to believe that is up to you). TheScore did a test at Performance Velocity and that combination lowered spin for everyone that was testing it (2 pitchers and 1 writer), not raised it, but felt like it gave better grip. MLB has consistently lowered the seams over time, which takes away grip. I don’t see any issue using something that doesn’t change RPM’s but gives better grip, squeezing the ball tighter will definitely cause more arm strain. Just grab a baseball in a fastball grip, and then grip it tighter and feel through your forearm, there’s just more tension there.
I think the MLB jumped the gun on cracking down midseason, as opposed to in the offseason. They should have taken the rest of the season to test what does what in regards to spin rate – not just instantly crack down because it’s in the news.
They didn’t jump the gun, was very likely the plan. The league and the fans do not give a flying fudge about players or health, managing earning potential and Long Term payroll efficiency is where it’s at
To me I definitely think that it is a big problem in the game, as I think it was one of the biggest things that is suppressing offense. With that said, a big midseason adjustment probably is the wrong way to go about it. They did however have that rule on the books, so it is hard for me to feel too bad for the pitchers.
That is all very reasonable.
What MLB sees, though, is that they have a product on the field that they believe may not be conducive to attracting new young fans: 6 no-hitters already, increased strike-outs, less balls in play, less action, homogeneous scoring (overwhelmingly by home runs), etc. And not attracting young fans is by far the biggest threat to the health of the game, financial and otherwise – every action they take is funneled trough that filter
So they are eager to fix that as soon as possible so they do not bypass a generation of potential fans. They’ll take the media hit for changing the game mid-season every time if it means they are making the game more appealing to those new young potential fans – they may even see the media hit as a feature rather than a bug … it at least gets people talking about the game of baseball, which is almost never a bad marketing move.
The biggest story yet to be written is “Rob Manfred: Vulture Capitalist?”
Hmm. This seems unnecessarily MLB-bashing in my opinion. I’m as liable to bash Manfred & Co. as anyone, but they did warn everyone before the season that they would be looking more closely at this issue (going so far as to take samples of balls, clothing, etc. from games), and it is and always has been against the rules for pitchers to use foreign substances. Also, rosin bags are still allowed (as they always have been) so it’s not like they have literally nothing now, as was claimed in the article. Sure, it sucks if you’re a pitcher and now you get a big advantage taken away from you, but it sucks for fans when every pitcher can seemingly strike batters out at will! I also find Galsnow’s claim that this led to his injury to be *extremely* dubious. Pitchers get hurt all the time, and they will likely continue to get hurt all the time! Maybe he really did get hurt because he had to change his grip, but pitching is inherently unhealthy for an arm, and here I’ll invoke the same correlation != causation rebuttal used against MLB’s reasoning for enforcing this rule now.
Ultimately I think upping the foreign substance enforcement is good for the game, and I really have very little sympathy for pitchers that were both cheating (as defined by the rulebook) this whole time, and also in fact given some forewarning that can at least be measured in months while crying that they had none.
Fess up. How many of you are owner shills trying to astroturf? Never seen this kind of pro-owner BS on here. That it appears now, all of a sudden, is highly suspect.
I think this is just where we’re at, very pro management pop forever demanding more rules, enforcement, and punishment
I DO think there’s some merit to changes but when Disney, Manfred, and the owners lead the charge it’s like buuzzz off, this isn’t about anything but the bottom line
IDK some of this is well thought out. And some of it isn’t, but I haven’t noticed anything particularly odd.
Yeah, I’ve never seen so much pro-owner/anti-player sentiment in the comments section. I got 35 downvotes for calling someone a bootlicker lol. Either there is astroturfing here or the average iq on this site is much lower than what I thought it was.
I love this shocking lack of self-reflection. “I called someone a disparaging name for daring to disagree with me, I can’t see why everyone loves the owners so much!”
Disliking the former does not necessarily imply the latter.
RE Umpire Enforcement
I suppose the umpire could take a sample, and if it’s not an approved substance, the player gets a long suspension. I’m sure there are more complexities, but thats generally how they do drug testing.
Maybe that is the long term framework.
I agree MLB has, in its usual ham-handed way, booted what was an eminently field-able ball. You don’t change on a dime when whatever rule existed at the time was clearly not being enforced in any consistent way. I don’t know whether we can actually make the Glasnow connection, but, if there’s causation resulting from the need to change grips, this will cost both the player and his team a great deal. The time for the change was the offseason, so pitchers can adapt. MLB usually is about the money, so look at the enormous contracts handed out to some pitchers. With multiple pitchers earning $20M or more per annum, it doesn’t take many going on the injured list to burn up a fortune.
From Scott Boras.
That “freeway” and “autobahn” analogy is pure Boras.
He is such a terrible good writer.
Ben mentions the argument being about control, yet according to FG walk rate is down from a similar number of games last year (3.55 to 3.38) and HBP, while up 1.3/team between 2020 and 2021, are far lower than first half of 2019 (35.9/team 1H2019, 27.4 2020, 28.7 2021). If there is some other measure of control that MLB discovered they would do everyone a favor by being more transparent. Safety would be a legitimate reason for this sudden move.
(I was surprised to see K% rose less between 2020 and 2021 than 1H 2019 (22.8 (1H2019), 23.5 (2020), 24 (2021) btw, tho era (down .35 to 4.11) and wOBA (down .009 to .310) have dropped more so. But the overall picture is mixed, and hard to see why so tumultuous a change was needed in season.
BTW just ftr since I’m big on this NFLization of MLB thing…What they’re looking to do is make pitchers the RBs of the league. Just as NFL fans were conditioned to devalue those players and the position, happy to cycle through and not really caring if there’s a bonafide guy let alone more than on/look at it as a unit rather than the individuals, soon will baseball fans (check out MLBTR’s article on Ryan Weber getting claimed by the Brewers today for instance), and our almighty lords above – so not entitled – will laugh to the bank
It’s amazing to watch happen so blantantly, I’ll give it that. Then again, nothing these reptiles do is ever blatant enough for this lost, content, justhappytobeworking soooo-ciety we have going on
Whether MLB is conspiring to do this or not, pitchers have become as interchangeable/disposable as NFL running backs have become. Totally agree Gato.
Are…are we watching the same sport? Because I would love my team to “interchange” some of our crap pitchers for deGrom, Scherzer, Cole, Buehler, Gausman…
The players have a union, the union regular discusses rules with MLB. They’ve had years to advocate for something better than the rosin bag as it exists today.
Can someone explain why they’re so opposed to writing down all these so-called gentlemen’s agreement, for a rather codified rule set. They’re in a league with players from across the world with many different languages and cultural backgrounds, and it would avoid misunderstandings.
Regardless of how this could/should have been implemented, I do believe we are going to get a better product and I welcome it. The latest meta is unwatchable, and it needs to be fixed. There is no time like the present. Baseball doesn’t need a dozen pitchers as dominant as peak Pedro and every team doesn’t need multiple relievers as dominant as peak Gagne.
Every time I read something that says the offense is suppressed, or there is a lack of HRs, I get a little perturbed. The reason is that the offense is not suppressed and there is no lack of HRs. This can be easily verified by looking at historical stats. According to Baseball Reference, as of yesterday, June 16th, the 2021 MLB season has averaged 4.41 runs per game and 1.16 HRs per game. From 2010 to 2019 (10 years), there have been 6 seasons that averaged less than 4.41 runs per game and 1.16 HRs per game (with another season that matches 1.16 HRs per game). If you want to go back further, since 1980 (40 years) there have been 17 seasons with less than 4.41 runs per game (with another season that matches 4.41 runs per game) and 35 seasons with less than 1.16 HRs per game (with another season that matches 1.16 HRs per game). And, this includes “the steroid era” which so many people continue to raise hell about.
With that said, the bottom line is that a lot, if not most, of the pitchers have been breaking the MLB rules about using foreign substances for many years. MLB has given them written warnings to stop on multiple occasions and they continued. MLB may have the authority to enforce the rules when and how they see fit. But, the timing (almost halfway through the season) seems awkward. I listened to Tyler Glasnow’s comments on the subject after his injury and I can honestly see how it could contribute to his injury. Nonetheless, he and everyone else was forewarned and they apparently ignored it.
One thing I don’t understand (excuse my ignorance if it is obvious) is that, in accordance with MLB rule 3.02 “No player shall intentionally discolor or damage the ball by rubbing it with soil, rosin, paraffin, licorice, sand-paper, emery-paper or other foreign substance.” Note that rosin is included in the list.
Yet, pitchers are allowed to use rosin and umpires are required to ensure there is an official rosin bag behind the mound prior to each game. So, how does that work? A pitcher puts rosin on his hands from the official rosin bag and rubs the ball. According to rule 3.02, is he supposed to be automatically suspended for 10 days? This doesn’t make any sense to me.
It isn’t so much offense, it’s action. The current meta is entirely about inactive 3 true outcome baseball.
Since 2002, we’ve gone from 54% of pitches in the strike zone to 41% of pitches. That’s when we started tracking Zone%. Contact is down 5%.
The game isn’t slower because of too many pitching changes, it’s slow due to pitchers working slower. And it isn’t figuring out what to throw, you’ve got 2 pitch relievers taking 30 seconds. They’re trying to catch the hitter off guard or get them bored enough to swing.
It’s probably optimal play, but it’s pretty boring.
Hughes, I agree 100%. I’ve commented on more than one occasion that the problem isn’t a lack of runs, but rather how they are scored. The TTO is alive and well… in fact, it is thriving more than ever ever before.
Why do you spend the first half of the article incorrectly claiming that no foreign substances at all are allowed, but then you spend the second half correctly admitting that rosin (by itself) is still allowed?
If the best baseball lineups are called Murderer’s Row, should we now call the worst lineups the Stegosaurus Squad?
“No murders here!”