No substance to shakedowns, Pitchers’ spin rates declining

Updated Wednesday, June 23, 2021

There’s a constant yin and yang to baseball: rulebook versus the unwritten rules.  Sometimes the unwritten rules have the upper hand.  Since 1920 the rulebook has not allowed any substance to be applied to the baseball except rosin and sweat.  Not even something as natural as saliva is legal.  But the unwritten rules allowed it, along with substances foreign to the body, such as pine tar and vaseline.

So now this delicate yet durable equilibrium is shattered.  Commissioner Manfred decided that doctoring of baseballs has crossed the line into medical malpractice.  He announced that pitchers found using any foreign substance — from the extremely sticky Spider Tack (a drop goes a long way) to the ubiquitous combination of sunscreen and rosin — will be subject to 10-game suspensions. 

“I understand the history of foreign substances being used on the ball,” Manfred said.  “But what we are seeing today is far different, with much tackier substances, used more frequently than ever before.  The use of foreign substance has morphed from trying to get a better grip on the ball into an unfair competitive advantage.”

The result, he said — as perhaps he should not have — is “a sport lacking action and an even playing field.”  How’s this for marketing? Take me out to a stagnant, uncompetitive ballgame.

Pitchers argue that tighter grip means more control, more safety for the batter.  But over the past three years, as Spider Tack took hold, the hit-by-pitch rates climbed.  The commissioner blames foreign substances for “enabling” a style of pitching in which control is sacrificed “in favor of spin and velocity.”

Truth is that Manfred’s bold stand has less to do with safety than with revenues.  He wants to reverse a trend that’s an unintended consequence of modern math and science combining to give us “analytics.”   To the average non-scientist, baseball is becoming less entertaining, with way too many strikeouts.  

For almost a century baseball was truly the national pastime because of its varied offense.  Colorful nomenclature hinted of audacious criminality: hit-and-run, stolen bases, double steals, suicide squeeze.  The game had the perfect blend of speed, grace, violence and strategy that everyone could understand.

But in this century baseball has become as stationary as golf, lots of standing around interspersed with an occasional long soaring drive.  A .237 batting average, once considered anemic, now is the norm.  But who really cares?  Batting average is now irrelevant.  And the stat sheets that ESPN posts for the 30 big-league teams no longer include earned-run average, the standard measure of pitching effectiveness.  History is getting tossed from a sport steeped in history in a way that football, basketball and golf can never be. 

Now it’s all about WHIP and WAR, launch angles, exit velo and spin rate.  Get off my lawn, I want my country back.

Pitchers do have a point in citing the sport’s long and downright proud history of cheating.  Gaylord Perry’s spitball put him in the Hall of Fame.  Joe Niekro was found with sandpaper in his pants, a great day in baseball history.   

Pitchers are howling about having to reinvent themselves on short notice.  Gerrit Cole in a video plea to the commish: “Please talk to us, please just work with us.  I know you have the hammer here.  But we’ve been living in a gray area for so long.”

Cole and his mound cohorts could be operating in the shadows, but Chris Russo of MLB Network’s High Heat saw Manfred’s messaging clearly: “The Commissioner’s Office sent out two memos in February of 2020 saying there must be no sticky substance on the balls.  Nobody listened.  So they sent out a memo on March 23rd of this year, saying there will be penalties.  I’m sick of these pitchers moaning and groaning, saying they had no warning that something was coming down.”

This week umpires began checking hats, gloves and belt for banned substances.  Among those frisked were aces Jake deGrom, Yu Darvish, Gerrit Cole and Max Scherzer.  Three times for Scherzer, at the insistence of Phillies manager Joe Girardi, who was convinced the pitcher was collecting grease when he kept raking his hand through his hair.  

In the most dramatic of the shakedowns on the mound, Oakland reliever Sergio Romo dropped his pants.

So far, no pitchers have been caught cheating, and there are more hits: an average of 14.7 per game.  The month of June has seen the lowest spin rates in three years.

Perhaps we should look elsewhere: the cavalier way Rob Manfred obfuscates on the manufacturing of baseballs.  

Every year we hear complaints from players of inconsistency in how the balls bounce or carry or feel.  And then we hear Manfred saying the Rawlings factories in Costa Rica are putting in more drag or less drag, as if Major League Baseball can’t control what they do.  The balls do not have to be so slick.  The seams could be more prominent to facilitate grip. 

Funny, I don’t hear NBA players discussing variance of basketballs.  And aside from one Deflategate there’s never been much controversy about footballs in the NFL.

Pedro Martinez, Hall of Fame pitcher of the 1990s, said on MLB Network, “I used only two substances to get better grip: the rosin bag and sweat.  The umpires didn’t care how many times you wiped your brow.”

Which causes me to wonder how sweat affects the movement of the ball, compared to saliva.  Ever hear of anyone throwing a sweatball?   I’m not sure I want to know about it if they did.  There’s something to be said for gray area.