We'll see what they do. The 4 minor leaguers ejected for doctoring balls were only suspended for 10 games.
LOL at MLB pretending they didn't know that this was the norm. "After a thorough investigation, we've concluded that coming into contact with water does in fact make you wet"
[…] One National League journeyman reliever, who says he uses Pelican Grip Dip, a pine tar/rosin blend typically used by hitters to help grip their bats, has been flagged at airport security. “They swab my fingers—and this is after showering and everything—and they’re like, ‘Hey, you have explosives on your fingers,’ ” he says. “I’m like, ‘Well, I don’t, but I’m sure that I have something that’s not organic on there.” […] An SI analysis of Statcast data suggests that one team in particular leads the industry in spin: the defending world champion Los Angeles Dodgers. According to the data, L.A. has by a large margin the highest year-to-year increase of any club in spin rate on four-seam fastballs, which are considered a bellwether pitch. In fact, the Dodgers’ four-seam spin rate is higher than that of any other team in the Statcast era. There is no proof the Dodgers are doctoring baseballs, but nearly across the board, their hurlers’ spin rates on that pitch have increased this season from last. The Dodgers declined to comment. […] MLB introduced a new baseball this year, one that was designed to increase offense but seems instead to be suppressing it. (Baseball Prospectus found that the new ball, which is about 1% lighter than the old one, is spinning faster, making it harder to hit, and flying less far once struck.) Many hitters are still ramping up from a truncated 2020 season. After a year with the universal designated hitter, pitchers are back at the plate, dragging down numbers. All these factors contribute to the drought. But mostly, people around the game blame sticky stuff. “If you want to talk about getting balls in play and kind of readjusting the balance of pitching and offense, I think it’s a huge place to start,” says an NL reliever who says he does not apply anything to the baseball because he believes that is cheating. “Because it seems to have created these basically impossible-to-hit pitches.” […] For hitters, all this suddenly acquired extra movement is catastrophic. What was an elite spin rate in 2018 is now average. The added spin means that the average four-seam fastball drops nearly two inches fewer this year than it did in ’18, according to Statcast, making it appear to hitters as if it’s rising. So far in ’21, facing fastballs down the middle thrown at 2,499 revolutions per minute or fewer, hitters have batted .330. Facing fastballs down the middle thrown at 2,500 rpms or more, they have batted .285. And the percentage of high-spin fastballs has increased threefold since ’15. “I’m tired of hearing people say that players only want to hit home runs,” says Rockies rightfielder Charlie Blackmon. “That’s not why people are striking out. They’re striking out because guys are throwing 97 mile-an-hour super sinkers, or balls that just go straight up with all this sticky stuff and the new-baseball spin rate. That’s why guys are striking out, because it’s really hard not to strike out.” […] If players have been doctoring the ball for a century, why is this all coming to a head now? Nearly everyone interviewed for this story mentioned one person in particular: Dodgers righthander Trevor Bauer. In 2018, Bauer seemed to accuse the Astros of applying foreign substances to baseballs in a cryptic tweet replying to a comment about Houston’s rotation. “If only there was just a really quick way to increase spin rate,” he wrote. “Like what if you could trade for a player knowing that you could bump his spin rate a couple hundred rpm overnight...imagine the steals you could get on the trade market! If only that existed…” (Houston denied the allegation.) He complained to reporters that by ignoring the problem, the league was sanctioning illegal behavior. Bauer said he had done tests in a pitching lab and found that sticky stuff added about 300 rpm to his four-seam fastball. He wrote in a Players’ Tribune essay that after eight years of trying, “I haven’t found any other way [to increase spin rate] except using foreign substances.” He also tried to make his point on the field: He used Pelican in the first inning of a 2018 start and watched his four-seamer, which usually averaged about 2,300 rpm, tick up to 2,600 rpm. After the first inning, that number dropped back to normal. “If I used that s---, I’d be the best pitcher in the big leagues,” he told SI in 2019. “I’d be unhittable. But I have morals.” From March through August of that year, his four-seamer averaged 2,358 rpm, according to Statcast. In September, it jumped to 2,750. In 2020, when he won the Cy Young Award for the Reds, it was 2,779. This season, the first of a three-year, $102 million deal that makes him the highest-paid pitcher in history, it’s 2,835. Before Bauer’s spin rate jumped, he had an ERA of 4.04 and the 228th-best opponent batting average, at .241. Since the increase, those figures are 2.31 and an MLB-best .161. The Athletic reported in April that the league had collected several balls from Bauer’s first start that “had visible markings and were sticky.” Asked about the report at the time, Bauer said, “MLB is just collecting baseballs to do a study. Like, they’re not doing anything with them. No one’s under investigation, or no one’s—like, just these gossip bloggers out here, writing stuff to try to throw water on my name or whatever.” (The league is indeed collecting balls from every pitcher for analysis, and there has been no finding that Bauer did anything wrong.) Through both his agent and the team, Bauer declined to make himself available for an interview. Manager Dave Roberts says he does not know if his players use sticky stuff. Los Angeles this year is Spin City, according to the SI analysis. In March, the league sent a memo to teams to warn them that it would begin studying the problem, collecting those baseballs for analysis and using spin rate data to identify potential users of foreign substances. Officials have focused on four-seam spin rate, because breaking pitches can sometimes be enhanced naturally. But four-seamers are thrown with the hand and wrist behind the ball and with true north-south backspin, so there are fewer variables. SI found that through June 2, the Dodgers had the highest increase in year-to-year four-seam spin rate, at 7.01%. The next highest was 4.21%, by the White Sox. That increase and that gap are enormous. The Red Sox came in third, at 4.01%; the Nationals fourth, at 3.07%; and the Yankees fifth, at 2.94%. The league-average increase has been 0.52% this year. (All clubs declined or did not respond to requests for comment.) Some of this surely relates to personnel. L.A., for instance, traded away Dylan Floro and Adam Kolarek and did not re-sign Pedro Baéz, all low-spin pitchers. They signed Bauer and Jimmy Nelson and traded for Garrett Cleavinger and Alex Vesia, who all spin the ball. Still, every active Dodger pitcher except one has a higher spin rate than he did last year. L.A.’s four-seam spin rate is 97 rpm higher than that of any other team in the Statcast era. The 2020 Reds, Bauer’s former team, and a group that calls itself Spincinnati—because of their development of pitchers with high spin rates—rank second. (When SI asked for an interview with a Cincinnati pitcher about sticky stuff, longtime Reds PR chief Rob Butcher refused to make the request to the player. “I am not asking him to participate in your project,” Butcher wrote in an email.) Whether or not Bauer is using sticky stuff, other players around the league have taken note of his success and have begun experimenting. In 2018, Bauer compared the use of foreign substances to that of steroids: MLB looks the other way while those unwilling to cheat put themselves at a disadvantage. Other people in the sport echo him. “People need to understand the significance of spin,” says one of the team executives. “It is every bit as advantageous as a [performance-enhancing drug]—except it has been sanctioned by the league and there are no [harmful] consequences for your body.” “We’re just doing the same thing we did during the steroid era,” says the other team executive. “We were oohing and ahhing at 500-plus-foot home runs. ... A 101-mile-an-hour, 3,000-rpm cutter, isn’t that the same thing as a 500-foot home run? It’s unnatural.” “It’s like steroids,” says one of the NL relievers. “For us that refuse to use sticky [stuff], we get pushed out, because ‘you don’t have great spin rate.’ Well, no s---, because I don’t cheat.”
[…] Four minor leaguers have so far this season been caught with substances, ejected and suspended for 10 games. (After one of those incidents, says a player who was there, relievers on both teams headed to the clubhouse to switch out their gloves.) Those punishments are supposed to send a message, but players hear a louder one. “The calculus is whoever gets outs better gets to play major league baseball,” says the NL reliever who says he uses Pelican. “There’s some guys that might have a moral dilemma about it, but I’m not one of those guys. It's not bad for your health. Steroids ... could kill you. That’s different than washing your hands of stick at the end of the game.” […] Bauer has in the past suggested that the league legalize everything, and there is merit to that approach: Many of these substances are hard to police. But legalizing everything would only make pitchers even more dominant and the game even less watchable. Most other people around the sport want the Spider Tack gone. Rawlings, which produces MLB baseballs, has experimented for years with a precoated ball such as the ones used in Japan and South Korea. MLB has sent prototypes to a handful of teams in spring training over the years; they reported that the tack wore away too quickly. That process is ongoing. Some pitchers propose a universal substance, developed and distributed by MLB, much the way rosin is. The AL manager suggests a TSA-style screening in the bullpen, then a 10-game suspension for anyone caught with anything afterward. One of the team executives supports suspending skippers for their players’ infractions. Managers generally did not make enough money as players to retire comfortably; pulling their game checks, he says, would turn them into hall monitors. Several players bring up the idea of escalating suspensions for pitchers. “At some point,” says the first NL reliever, “you should just get kicked out of the [league].” People familiar with the league’s plans say that stepped-up enforcement is forthcoming—despite some teams’ attempts at subterfuge. Once baseballs are out of play, they are supposed to be thrown into the home dugout, where they can be collected by MLB for analysis. Some teams, observers note, have tried tossing especially sticky balls into the visitors’ dugout. Meanwhile, league officials plan to begin punishing offenders. Days or weeks from now, they will encourage teams to police their clubhouses, then instruct umpires to start checking pitchers more frequently. Offenders are to be ejected and suspended 10 games. “Pitchers are shortsighted if they’re not mad [about sticky stuff],” says Marlins reliever Richard Bleier, who says he has never used anything more than sunscreen and rosin because he wants to feel proud of his career. “Like, ‘Oh, we don’t want hitters to hit’—well, look what’s happening now. Hitters aren’t hitting, and now everybody’s going to be penalized.” Not everyone agrees. Three minor league pitchers tell SI they use sticky stuff and they don’t feel guilty about it. “We’re all trying to make the big leagues, and if that’s what it takes to get there, that’s what it takes,” says one. “They want the guys with the best stuff, and the guys with the best stuff are using something.” So he digs his fingers into his team-issued can of Tyrus, and he heads to the mound.
SI Daily Cover: "This should be the biggest scandal in sports." What a bunch of ********ing bullshit. **** all of you, every one of you, right in the goat ass
https://www.instagram.com/reel/CP3Ldn3B89r/?utm_medium=copy_link edit: here’s the video w/o clicking the link:
Yeah, maybe it's just because I'm on the wrong side of 40 now, but I really, REALLY struggle to follow drama on Twitter. Like I often can't even tell who is replying to who and the shorthand people employ because the character count is limited confuses the hell out me. It always feels like I read a tweet and the person tweeting just assumes everyone knows the backstory...
