Quote:
Originally Posted by Izz
So Bauer's still elbow deep in the sticky stuff. deGrom, well, I still don't think he is. His 4-seam spin rate hasn't risen steeply enough at any point, imo
|
It's just so much speculation from our vantage point. All we can really do is give opinions from, frankly, a really far distance away.
I pulled the 4 seamer spin for Bauer, deGrom and Cole from 2015-present (present seems to be on the left). I also grabbed two pitchers at semi-random. I just wanted some guys who pitched during that time frame and also had 4 seamers. Bauer, Cole and deGrom all go up over time, probably in that order of how much they went up. Gibson and Martinez didn't really do much over that period, they were fairly flat.
One of the things about this situation is that rosin bags have been legal for a long time. So part of the game expects that the pitcher should be allowed to have a good grip on the ball - in fact there's a vested interest in a pitcher having a good grip so that 90mph fastball doesn't fly at your head. It's a classic death-by-a-thousand-cuts situation. Using pine tar to get some tack to your fingertips, the discovery that some sunscreens + rosin will form adhesive.
It's no wonder that something like this could have escalated at a glacial pace to get to where it is today. I'm sure steroids too a similar path from let's do weight training > let's eat right > these vitamins are good > hey here's some tailor-made chemicals > these steroids aren't technically against the rules > etc. It's inevitable that this would culminate in Jose Canseco flipping a moving bus on I-95 like he was in an Avenger's film.