Riding the bus back to the team hotel after a recent game, members of a National League club passed around the ball from a rookie’s first hit. The players were stunned by how sticky the ball was — how hours after the ball was taken out of play, they were still picking glue strands off the rawhide.
“What are we even doing here?” a pitcher on that team said.
Many in the game are asking the same question about pitchers who illegally apply foreign substances to baseballs. The problem remains rampant even in a season when Major League Baseball says it is taking additional steps to enforce rules prohibiting such conduct, including examining balls from every pitcher.
“Everyone has swing-and-miss stuff from top to bottom, and it’s not because everyone got so much better in the last three years,” Phillies catcher J.T. Realmuto told reporters on Wednesday. “To be honest, that stuff helps a lot.
“Let the hitters take steroids and (pitchers) can do that (to keep pace).”
Realmuto was obviously being facetious. But just as the league was slow to crack down on the use of performance-enhancing drugs, some within the sport believe it is reacting too deliberately to the elevated spin rates and improved performances of many pitchers in recent seasons.
The current enforcement is minimal, in part because umpires generally act only when prompted by managers, and managers hesitate to single out opposing pitchers when pitchers on their own staff also might be breaking the rules. The league says that before fundamentally changing the system, it needs more time to collect data from its increased monitoring and inspection efforts as well as the spin-rate analysis outlined in a March 23 memo to clubs. Those efforts might not produce tangible results until 2022, though discipline this season is possible.
Seven weeks into the season, however, no discipline has been announced. If warnings have been issued, they have not been made public. The frustration — even among some pitchers — is palpable.
“It is getting out of hand,” said an American League pitcher, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “When you watch some of these guys from the dugout you can almost hear the ball ripping out of their hands. Guys are doing stuff now that you can’t do to a baseball with just your hand. You just can’t.”
The use of illegal foreign substances by many pitchers is not the only factor driving the sport’s declining offensive numbers, which include a .236 batting average and 24.1 percent strikeout rate, both of which would be records over a full season, and six no-hitters in the season’s first seven weeks, already just one shy of the major-league mark.
The power-driven approaches of hitters, use of pitchers in shorter bursts, rise of defensive shifts and deadening of the ball this season all are potentially contributing to the pitching dominance. And while the analogy between illegal substances and PEDs is not precise — both pitchers and hitters benefited from PEDs — some players see similarities in the competitive advantages users gain.
The problem, those players say, has only grown worse since Dodgers right-hander Trevor Bauer, then with Cleveland, first used The Steroid Era as a comparison in 2018. (Bauer remains part of this conversation, albeit from a different perspective. Less than one week into the current season, umpires collected multiple balls he threw against the A’s that had visible markings and were sticky, sources said.)
“It’s pretty frustrating picking up a foul ball and seeing it covered in sticky stuff,” Marlins outfielder Adam Duvall said. “At the end of the day, you would like to know that you are on a level playing field with your opponent. That doesn’t seem to be the case at times.”
Said the NL pitcher, who spoke on condition of anonymity, “It’s the same thing as (Sammy) Sosa and (Mark) McGwire bopping all those home runs. Everyone knew, at least everyone on the inside, knew what they were doing. And then you have guys who are like, ‘I better do something or I won’t have a job.’ And then you have guys who are on the fence like, ‘Will I sell my soul for ‘X’ amount of money?’ And a lot of them are going to say yes.
“The league talks about a level playing field, but how is this level?”
Not long ago, certain players lodged similar complaints about PEDs. The league first banned the drugs in 1991, when former commissioner Fay Vincent issued a memo saying the use of any illegal drug or controlled substance by players was “strictly prohibited.” But the league, in conjunction with the Major League Baseball Players Association, did not begin testing for PEDs until 2003 and did not institute penalties until 2005, allowing the development of what admitted user Alex Rodriguez called a “loosey-goosey era.”
A similar culture exists around pitchers who, in clear defiance of MLB’s Rule 6.02, apply illegal substances to baseballs. Some merely are trying to improve their grips. But others are seeking better spin rates and results.
“Most players, if you go into a clubhouse and you see a pitcher putting stuff on his glove, the hitters give him a hard time but that’s it,” another AL pitcher said. “They don’t like it but they won’t stop it. They know everyone is doing it and they want to win. What good is only stopping your guy from cheating? Makes no sense.”
Royals general manager Dayton Moore said even hitters agree that baseballs require a certain level of tackiness for pitchers to control their pitches. No longer, however, is this simply a question of safety for hitters, who are getting hit by pitches at a record pace in part because pitchers are throwing with greater velocity and better movement. Certain advanced substances help produce greater spin rates than, say, a combination of sunscreen and rosin.
Since the start of the Statcast era in 2015, the percentage of fastballs thrown with spin rates over 2400 RPM has nearly doubled, from 18 percent to 35 percent. The NL pitcher, like others before him, said it is impossible to achieve such dramatic increases in spin rate naturally. Hall of Fame pitcher Jim Palmer and White Sox hitting coach Frank Menechino are among those who said the substances also help enhance movement on breaking balls.
“They are using stuff, I think it is very obvious,” said Palmer, a member of the Orioles broadcast team. “It’s blatant even if you can’t see them going to their forearm or anything every second. I hit 38 guys in (3,948) innings and now people are saying you need it for grip? It’s an excuse, we all know that. They are using it to be better.
“All of a sudden, you can take any pitcher and increase his spin rates. We have to look at why that’s happening, if (league officials) want to change it. Do they want to change it? Or does everyone just like no-hitters?”
The blatant examples are the ones that bother baseball people most.
“I’ve seen three or four cases this year where I’m like, ‘Are you s——- me?’” said Menechino, the hitting coach for the second-highest scoring team in the majors. “If MLB is watching this, how are they missing this one?”
The league, before it acts on any violations, first wants to understand the depth of the problem, MLB officials said. In his March 23 memo, MLB senior vice president of on-field operations Michael Hill informed clubs that the league would inspect and document balls taken out of play this season and conduct spin-rate analysis on pitchers who are suspected of using foreign substances.
The memo stated that players are subject to discipline “regardless of whether evidence of the violation has been discovered during or following a game.” But the league, knowing any suspension would be subject to challenge from the union, wants to gather as much evidence as possible to build potential cases against pitchers it suspects of using illegal substances.
“The Central office data collection is ongoing,” an MLB official said.
A long-term solution would be to develop a tackier ball that produces adequate grip, in theory eliminating the need for pitchers to use foreign substances. The league took partial control of the baseball manufacturing process when it partnered in 2018 with a private equity firm co-founded by Padres owner Peter Seidler to purchase its longtime baseball and helmet supplier, the Rawlings Sporting Goods Company. A new ball, however, likely would take years to test and develop.
Meanwhile, another season might elapse before MLB adopts meaningful change in enforcement.
“So, what, we’re taking a pause on this? We’re going to not enforce the rules for a year?” the NL pitcher asked. “What about guys trying to get paid? What about guys fighting for jobs?
“You have hitters who are like, ‘How the f— are we supposed to hit this?’ For big-league hitters to admit defeat is rare. But when you have a guy throwing a fastball that rises 4 feet or a slider that looks like a strike and drops off another foot, it’s like video game stuff. You think (hitters) are just complaining, but then you look at the video and it’s like, holy s—, how are they supposed to hit this? I don’t care what your approach is at the plate, you don’t have a chance.”
The Royals’ Moore, taking a broader view, said grip was a major concern early in the season during games played in cold, dry weather, leaving some pitchers with a “helpless feeling” when they could not get a proper feel for the ball. However, Moore added, “It is wrong to cheat. If the rules say it’s illegal, then it ought to be enforced.”
Palmer said, “The weather doesn’t matter. You have whatever stuff they are using, and the movement is there. It’s there every night. Everyone is doing it.”
That perception is a problem in the view of one AL pitcher, just as it was during the height of the Steroid Era when some people used the same broad brush to portray all players as PED users. Not all pitchers are cheating, the pitcher said. But now, the accomplishments of even the innocent are occasionally in question.
“It’s not right. It’s just not right,” the pitcher said. “It’s not good for the game.”
Realmuto, in his meeting with reporters Wednesday, cited a number of reasons why offense might be down, including pitchers throwing harder and with more break than ever before.
But he added, “I think the substance issue is real,” then elaborated when asked what suggestions he might make to boost offense, other than lowering or moving back the mound.
“I would just crack down on the substances they use on their hands,” Realmuto said. “You see pitchers out there all game long doing this (touching his mitt). They’re not doing anything about it. I think if they cracked down on that, that would honestly help the offense a lot, get the ball in play more often and (result in) less swing and missing.”
He sees pitchers constantly going to their gloves?
“All the time.”
Until the league starts enforcing its rules, there is no reason to hide it.
— The Athletic’s Matt Gelb and Eno Sarris contributed to this story
