I'm back.... and no longer sticky
It’s been a long time since I’ve found a good weekend to sit down and jot down my thoughts on the baseball world. And my running list of potential thoughts in my notes app has grown more into a list of ideas where I’ve just missed the news peg. So, before I get into the only real news in baseball that everyone cares about, here’s a few quick hit ideas of posts that never materialized due to work pursuits that kept me away:
Why are MLB players testing positive (AND being suspended) for dehydrochloromethyltestosterone (DCHMT)… a Soviet-era, East-German steroid that players allege is being detected due to testing procedures that are wholly inadequate?
What does Rob Manfred’s comment about MLB’s expansion fees being set at roughly $2.2B say about the state of the game relative to the NBA and its plans for expansion?
What do Tony LaRussa’s comments about Yermin Mercedes’ garbage time home run illustrate about organizational effectiveness, leadership principles, and human capital retention?
All these things… I won’t discuss because there’s something stickier that’s afloat. MLB has begun to crack down on pitchers using foreign substances to “doctor” the baseball despite unwritten rules allowing some leeway in this area for decades.
As a quick physics primer to illustrate why this crackdown has happened: when a pitcher delivers a pitch, he imparts spin onto the ball in some capacity (either backspin on a fastball, or lateral spin/top spin on off-speed pitches). The longer a pitcher is able to make contact with a pitch, the more surface area of the ball a pitcher is able to touch, and the more spin that is imparted onto the ball. More spin often means more movement, thereby making the pitch more effective.
Furthermore, baseballs come out of the box quite slippery and in order to maintain control over their pitches and limit potential injury to batters, pitchers have been using pine tar or a concoction of sunscreen and rosin to make the ball tackier for years. However, in recent years, pitchers have been more cavalier with the substances they use— deploying goops like Spider Tack (a remarkably sticky substance used by strongmen to lift Atlas Stones). This means astronomical spin rates and baseballs that are really hard to hit.
The rub (pun intended) here is that this has been illegal for years, regardless of the substance deployed. However, it’s only now— in the middle of a season— that MLB has decided to enforce this rule, creating a good amount of drama and controversy:
First, the decision to make enforcement decisions in the middle of a season is quit unusual. Pitchers haven’t had the offseason to prepare and change their approaches based on the new standards. The haphazard decision on enforcement method has led to awkward inspections of pitchers coming off the mound, and tense encounters with Max Scherzer on the mound. But moreover, the decision to make an enforce foreign substances mid season illustrates a failure to manage public relations. Coverage of the decision by MLB has been met with the ire of fans and pitchers alike for failing to understand the implications of the decision and establishing arbitrary standards for pitching quality.
Second, the backdrop of the enforcement decision is quite obvious. League-wide offense has been plummeting this season after MLB publicly deadened the baseball this offseason. Combined with a rise in spin-rates and more effective pitchers, these two decisions have created a major problem for a sport that was already becoming unwatchable to younger fans. MLB has tried to find ways to make the game more engaging for fans and increasing offense has been a priority for the league (despite its own counterintuitive decision to deaden the baseball). This effort to reduce spin rates mid season by cracking down on sticky stuff is perhaps a step in that direction. But again, the fact that this decision comes in a way that not only has a tangible effect on the performance of 50% of its players but is also juxtaposed against its own decision to deaden the ball illustrates a failure of MLB to manage toward objectives.
And third, the impact on pitchers in particular is one that will fall under serious scrutiny. In relation to the deadening of the baseball, Mets slugger Pete Alonso alleged that MLB has been secretly deadening and juicing the baseball depending on the quality of hitters and pitchers entering the free agent market in a subsequent offseason. If more pitchers are entering the market, a lively ball would increase offense, depress pitcher stats, lead to lower salaries, and impart cost savings to the teams. While conspiratorial, the decision to hamstring pitchers by reducing spin rates and presumably lower their salaries can be considered in this context.
Here, different classes of pitchers are arguably going to be impacted differently. But as baseball has homogenized toward high-spin four-seam fastballs at the top of the zone, very few pitchers remain who thrive on low spin change-ups and two-seamers low. Will pitchers who are able to transition to low-spin pitches reap the rewards of this new paradigm by adjusting faster than their high-spin peers? We’ll have to wait and see until the offseason.
Assuming MLB was going to make this decision to crack down on foreign substances anyway, there are probably better ways this could have happened. MLB could have rolled out this policy in the offseason and telegraphed its intentions to the union, enabling coordination. MLB could have chose to enforce only the stickiest of sticky things— turning a blind eye to or even encouraging pitchers to use sunscreen/rosin cocktails while cracking down hard on Spider Tack. This may have been the best compromise with the players and mirrored the law enforcement policies that turn a blind eye to marijuana while enforcing strict penalties on harder drugs.
But ultimately, MLB’s decision to roll out this policy the way they did adds more fuel to the burning dumpster fire that is labor relations in the sport. This blog has become a big doom and gloom purveyor in the last year but given the way that MLBPA/MLB relations continue to unfold it’s hard not to be. Players continue to be enraged by the decisions that MLB makes and MLB continues to prove that it will not make decisions that encourage reconciliation. With 4 months left in the season, we should all start coming to the realization that we may only have 4 months until a collective bargaining failure and a lockout.