At this point I don't even care about this part of it - he is going to be suspended because the front office for MLB is crooked as ****. They could test his glove and find nothing but rosin and human sweat and they would still come down hard on him. My concern is that the performance of Blanco is because of him "cheating". FWIW the rosin bag on the other arm is something that I did as a pitcher and something that I have seen other pitchers do. On one hand I suppose you could argue that Blanco did this with the express purpose of taking his right hand and getting some "stick" for use late on. However - I did it because when you REALLY sweat, in Texas humidity - you can actually have the sweat run onto your glove, or fly off your arm into your face or on the ball and that does not help you as a pitcher at all. The good news is that it seems that it is just a rosin and sweat issue and not other substances. The league tests balls used in games for the purpose of catching people cheat with banned substances. This is just rosin and sweat, both are allowed. If Blanco really wants to create that extra "stick", he should use a different glove each inning so there is no build up and dust it off. I find it all to be such bullshit though....... Fiers joined the Astros and was using banned substances on the ball and nothing happened to him, other than having the bench coach pull him aside and tell him it was obvious. Jeff Suppan was caught on camera in the World Series with stuff on his glove and everyone acted like it didn't happen. The reigning Cy Young winner in the AL used substances as well. Guys have won Cy Young awards doing it...... but #4 starter, Ronel Blanco gets thrown out for mixing sweat and rosin.
Sorry AJ - but I didn't play professionally, and I put rosin on my non-throwing arm when sweating a lot. You want to avoid straight liquid on the ball.
I'm already seeing comments of fans and talking heads for other teams going "there goes the Stros cheating again.."
If this is just rosin then this is pretty damn stupid. They should've just confiscated the glove, made him change gloves and wash hands, then after investigation IF they find banned substances on the glove then suspend. This crew straight up went into shooting first and asking questions later. Their rush to eject Ronel made the Astros deplete their bullpen yesterday, and if suspended we will be one more pitcher short than we already are for 10 days, which will further deplete the staff. I am getting really tired of MLB being overzealous with their authority and always harming the Astros in the process. Yes, I am talking about the sign stealing but it goes back further than that....making us play a home game in Milwaukee against the Cubs during a pennant race, making us switch leagues, telling us to open our roof....F*** this S***!!
So we're all just assuming there will be a suspension. When will something official be announced? EDIT: Ooooookay then.
Ban sweating! The knuckles of the glove hand would be the only place to apply a 'foreign substance' to transfer it to the pitching hand without taking the glove off. Yet the umps didn't want to hear it when Blanco kept telling them to check both of his hands. how does this even make sense.
Because of the Twolves Nuggets game I didn't hear about it until this morning but not surprised at all that people were taking shots at the Astros.
Is there any proof that they found any substance that was actually banned instead of rosin?? I don't care about the rule about you can't have rosin on anywhere but your pitching hand...add that to the list of rules that nobody knew about or was disregarded for 100 years. They put a rosin bag ON THE DAMN MOUND for the pitchers to use. Rosin is chalky and dusty, if you're worried it will get on other parts of the body then DONT HAVE A ROSIN BAG ON THE MOUND. I effing HATE the MLB sometimes man, the sanctimony and selective and arbitrary heavy handedness is out of control.
I would appeal if that’s an option. Probably would still lose but the process would lend the opportunity to point out MLBs inconsistency with sticky stuff
Sadly - it is MLB, so I have ZERO confidence that they would report that they only found sweat and rosin on the glove. At best we will hear nothing at all. I love baseball but MLB management is terrible. They manipulate the ball to increase and decrease homers, they overlooked rampant PED use because of ratings, they have their own media arm to cover the sport, they regularly step in to "fix things", whether that was the Astros scandal where they tried to cover it up by firing Luhnow, and then threw the Astros under the bus and protected other teams that cheated... to stepping in and helping the Astros years before when they promised Jacob Nix money that they didn't even have. It is a joke - so no, I don't expect us to get a straight answer.
Dana Brown doesn't look very happy. I'm hoping angry Dana comes back out - he used to have a fierce temper.
I like getting the process going ASAP. He's not gonna get this reduced and lets burn the days now. Is it fair? No, but just get it over with.
How long does he have to appeal? I would wait, serve games until the last day to appeal. If he can serve 2 games, appeal and then 3 or 4 more after it is reduced ( they are always reduced) then he can pitch that many days sooner. He isn't pitching the next 4-5 days anyway. Example 1) appeal now, appeal is heard in 3 days and reduced to 6 games - he starts 5/24 2) he serves 2 games and appeals 5/17 and its reduced to 6 games - he starts 5/22 Is that a possibility?
