When we weren't looking ...

[Déjà Bru]

The Yankees Gerritt Cole, when asked directly if he uses a sticky paste called Spider Tack while on the mound: "I don't [long pause] ... I don't know ... I don't quite know how to answer that, to be honest."

Which means he's been using it and it accounts for at least some of his success.

I feel like I've been in a coma and I am just awakening from it now. I remember when a pitcher couldn't go anywhere near his mouth, or his hat, or his glove, without putting an umpire on alert. Now I see guys doing all sorts of things like this and nobody checks?

And they wonder why strikeouts are through the roof; why no-hitters are on a record pace; and why a third of some lineups have batters who cannot reach the Mendoza Line. And why people are getting bored with the game.

It makes me want to cry out "Who's in charge here and why aren't they doing their jobs?" but I already know the answers to both of those questions. The response to the second one is "incompetence and money."

The wavering course that this game is on — remember a couple of years ago, the concern was the proliferation of home runs because the ball itself was doctored? — and some of the bonehead changes they have made to dumb the game down and spice it up; the dashboard warning light is flashing.

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/...ow-answer-that

[David Watts]

Originally Posted by Déjà Bru

The Yankees Gerritt Cole, when asked directly if he uses a sticky paste called Spider Tack while on the mound: "I don't [long pause] ... I don't know ... I don't quite know how to answer that, to be honest."

Which means he's been using it and it accounts for at least some of his success.

I feel like I've been in a coma and I am just awakening from it now. I remember when a pitcher couldn't go anywhere near his mouth, or his hat, or his glove, without putting an umpire on alert. Now I see guys doing all sorts of things like this and nobody checks?

And they wonder why strikeouts are through the roof; why no-hitters are on a record pace; and why a third of some lineups have batters who cannot reach the Mendoza Line. And why people are getting bored with the game.

It makes me want to cry out "Who's in charge here and why aren't they doing their jobs?" but I already know the answers to both of those questions. The response to the second one is "incompetence and money."

The wavering course that this game is on — remember a couple of years ago, the concern was the proliferation of home runs because the ball itself was doctored? — and some of the bonehead changes they have made to dumb the game down and spice it up; the dashboard warning light is flashing.

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/...ow-answer-that

Do you remember seeing the text message Cole allegedly sent to Brian Harkens the Angels ex clubhouse manager that was fired for supplying visiting pitchers with his blend of sticky stuff?

[mytreds]

Like steroids, it’s an open secret and will take a decade or so to flush out.

Unrelated but the shift is also compounding the lower batting average as well.

[rafla]

4 minor leaguers were suspended 10 games each for this exact reason.
Things such as this will continue to occur in sports in general as long as the mighty dollar is involved.
As long as the team is winning and putting fans in the seats and getting endorsements owners, execs, managers, coaches and others will continue to look the other way until the public complains that it is ruining the game.

[vrobx1]

This been going on since before any of today's players were even born.

Me and the Spitter was written by Gaylord Perry. In 1974.

I have no doubt pitchers were doctoring the ball before he was born.

He learned it from somewhere.

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[rudel.dietrich]

I got curious, so I pulled up a few games from this season, and then I went back and pulled games from 2005-2008

As you said, almost every pitcher uses their glove on the ball. In the games I watched from 13-15 years ago, I saw a lot less.

I watched games this season, almost every pitcher as soon and he gets the ball grinds it into the palm of his glove with his pitching hand, and rotates it.
Now that I know what I am looking at, it is clear that they are coating every surface of the ball with some kind of substance.

If I went back and watched games from the 80s or 90s I might see it even less than in the years I selected.

In that SI story from a few days ago, it talked about how obvious and sticky the ball is. So the umpires have to know. That tells me they either don't care, had no direction from MLB on what to do after they reported it, or were told not to enforce it. Or some combination of the three.

Another thing I noticed is the sound of the bat meeting the ball. In games from this season, it sounds like a wet mushy muted sound.
In the games I watched from the mid-2000s there was a clear crack of the bat.

I think the lighter ball and sticky substances have made getting good solid contact on the ball harder and when you do, you have less effect.

Baseball has problems enough, this is not what they needed right now.

[rudel.dietrich]

And yes, ball doctoring has been going on since the 19th century.
Rubbing dirt into the ball, concealing steel wool or a razer blade in your glove to scuff and scratch up the ball, rubbing the ball against the home plate. Dozens of things were done in the early days of baseball to try and damage the ball and make it harder to hit.

But this is so widespread that action has to be taken. Pitchers are naturally better now, they are throwing harder and getting more natural spin even without the aid of substances. Add in substances and it is making them almost unhittable.

For those that complain that batters no longer look for contact and rely too much on taking walks and do not try and get contact on pitches just outside the strike zone, this is why.
Pitches inside the strike zone are hard enough to get solid contact on. Swinging at something outside the zone is going to lead to even weaker contact and either a weak out or a foul and a strike.

[pgjocki]

I so so want MLB to take every dollar Cole and Trevor Bauer have made over the last 3 years away and fine the owners triple that amount.

I'm so sick of the cheating but sadly you'd have to have super fines or Shoeless Joe Jackson type suspensions to get this to stop.

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[swoboda]

Using my 1000th post for this.
Cheating in baseball is sadly part of the game, and players who do it often don't stop even when caught and punished. Spitballs, corked bats, stealing signs via lookouts, steroids, HGH, testosterone, vaseline, spider goop, and whatever comes next. The frailty of human character is exposed, some resist but many succumb, because "everyone else does it " and because all of these things work.
There is no reward for the average player to remain ethical, unless the penalties for cheating are severe, but the penalties will not be severe because you can never penalize players in large numbers severely.

[Déjà Bru]

I don't think we give up though. In these discussions, you often hear comments like "cheating has been going on forever" and "everybody is doing it" but it's a matter of degree. Bad human behavior has been going on since the beginning of the species but that doesn't mean you give in to it. You crack down on it, you control and minimize it, you keep up your guard, and you don't let grubby concerns get in the way.

It's that last phrase which is the current problem. As I was reading this sentence (quite a sentence, by the way), my mind inserted the bracketed words: "the penalties will not be severe because you can never penalize [popular and profitable] players in large numbers severely."

The resolutions are always the same:

• The human race will go on in one form or another (that is, until some cataclysm, probably self-imposed, occurs).
• Unimportant aspects of the human condition, such as cheating in sports, will continue to ebb and flow depending on circumstances.
• By far the most fundamental of those circumstances is money. If people become bored with a sport because they are not sure that what they are witnessing is genuine, then money will determine whether the sport reforms itself or it passes into history. If more money can be made by the sport cleaning up its act, then that will happen instead.

[Déjà Bru]

Originally Posted by Déjà Bru

If people become bored with a sport because they are not sure that what they are witnessing is genuine ...

Let me give you a quick example of this.

I am a Yankees fan. Now that I know he's been using Spider Tack, and that he is likely to continue using it or something similar if not closely monitored, my enjoyment of Cole's past and future accomplishments is diminished.

I am watching him pitch last night and I am wondering whether he is "on the stuff" or not. I did not revel in his nine strikeouts.

Perhaps I am more typical than I realize? If so, not a good sign.

[dsvitak]

A good catcher can sharpen a buckle on his shin guards, and whack the ball against them. Once or twice with that, and that ball can sing God Bless America as it sails up to the plate.

[Déjà Bru]

Originally Posted by dsvitak

A good catcher can sharpen a buckle on his shin guards, and whack the ball against them. Once or twice with that, and that ball can sing God Bless America as it sails up to the plate.

Now, that would temporarily restore my interest in the sport!

[pgjocki]

Originally Posted by Déjà Bru

... my enjoyment of Cole's past and future accomplishments is diminished.

I am watching him pitch last night and I am wondering whether he is "on the stuff" or not. I did not revel in his nine strikeouts.

Perhaps I am more typical than I realize? If so, not a good sign.

This 100%. I watched Cole pitch before he was 'great' and had enjoyed his rise. Knowing it's all a sham just makes baseball turn into wrestling and is probably the reason I've only watched maybe a half dozen games this yet.

Speaking of which, I really should just cancel MLB.TV as I'm not using it.

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[dsvitak]

Originally Posted by Déjà Bru

Now, that would temporarily restore my interest in the sport!

That's a riff on what Jim Bouton said, when he talked about Elston Howard, and helping out his buddy Whitey Ford. Hilarious!

[ezpkns34]

Glasnow on the substance crackdown causing his injury:
https://twitter.com/TBTimes_Sports/s...22959857434630

June spin rate dip already a bit noticeable:
https://twitter.com/DBITLefty/status...10063377649664

[Déjà Bru]

Originally Posted by ezpkns34

Glasnow on the substance crackdown causing his injury:
https://twitter.com/TBTimes_Sports/s...22959857434630

June spin rate dip already a bit noticeable:
https://twitter.com/DBITLefty/status...10063377649664

Glasnow: No sympathy, sorry.

As one tweeter said, "Glasnow claiming that going 'cold turkey' contributed to his elbow injury is far fetched. Normal wear and tear are to blame." Also, if he hadn't been using the stuff in the first place, there would be no cold turkey.

Now, a case could be made for which I will award partial credit: I am now reading that pretty much "everybody" was doing it and to not do it would be foolishly penalizing oneself. When I read that, it is usually in conjunction with putting the blame on MLB for looking the other way until it got so egregious (i.e., lots of guys batting below .200) that they had to do something. Just like steroids.

We need better MLB leadership who will look after the game instead of looking after the dollars.

Spin rate: How is it even possible to measure the rate of a thrown baseball spinning at 2,500 revolutions per minute? I mean, obviously it's possible, but I have a hard time grasping how it's done, even with today's technology. The ball is approaching the plate at upwards of 100 MPH.

According to one authority:

Let's do a little math, shall we?

Let's assume the pitcher in question is throwing 90MPH, which is on the low end of an MLB fastball.

90MPH into the number of feet per hour equals 475,200 feet per hour. Divide that number by 60 and you have 7,920 feet per minute. Divide that number by 60 and you have 132 feet per second.

Now take 60.5 (representing the distance from the mound to the plate) and divide it by our feet per second above, 132.

60.5 ÷ 132 = 0.4583

So, a low end MLB fastball takes a whopping 0.46 seconds to get to the plate!

BUT, that assumes the ball is released from 60'6 from the plate. Factor in a pitcher striding toward the plate in his motion and he's probably really releasing the ball from about 57.5 to 58 feet.

57.5 ÷ 132 = 0.4356

0.44 seconds.

It's a small miracle that hitters are able to make contact at all, isn't it?

[Westheim]

Glasnow's full of ****. I doubt he himself believes that.

Regarding the 0.44 seconds it takes for a low-end MLB fastball to get to home plate - by the time players get to see a low-end MLB fastball they've already faced off against such pitche(r)s for about a decade. The guys that can't time that have been weeded out as high school sophomores.

The variance between a 90mph and 100mph fastball is roughly 0.04-0.05 seconds. It hardly matters in terms of swinging. Which is why guys that throw 99 dead-straight down the middle still get pounded.

[Jason Moyer]

The K rate has been increasing constantly for 50 years, weird that the MLB is suddenly doing something about it but I guess that's how they run things (see: 40 years of steroids before Congress held hearings and baseball had to start giving a crap). Can't wait until someone hits 80 homeruns in 5-10 years and they notice that the homerun rate has been higher for the past 5 years than at any point in baseball history and overreact to that.

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by mytreds

Like steroids, it’s an open secret and will take a decade or so to flush out.

Unrelated but the shift is also compounding the lower batting average as well.

If the shift is having any effect, it’s in pulling BABIP from its normal .290ish mark to the low .280s. That’s it. That translates into like a 5 point drop in batting average.