Sticky Situation

Over the last week or two, Major League Baseball (MLB) has had a handful of different sources and players come out and say that a portion of the game’s best pitcher’s are using foreign substances on the baseballs to enhance grip and improve accuracy and spin rate on the ball. Sounds illegal? It is.

However, just like the steroid era in the early 2000’s the MLB has turned somewhat of a blind eye to the substances these pitchers use. Essentially, as long as the substance was not very visible, or overly sticky, the MLB and umpires would usually turn the other way. The main substance that has been rumored to be taking over the league has been Spider Tack; an extremely sticky substance. 

When star pitcher and former Cy Young winner Gerrit Cole was asked if he’s used foreign substances here was his response, 

“I don’t quite know how to answer that, to be honest. There are customs and practices that have been passed down from older players to younger players, from past generation players to this generation of players. I think there are some things that are certainly out of bounds in that regard, and I’ve stood pretty firm in terms of that, in terms of the communication between our peers and whatnot. Again, like I mentioned earlier, this is important to a lot of people that love the game, including the players in this room, the fans, including teams. If MLB wants to legislate some more stuff, that’s a conversation we can have because ultimately we should all be pulling in the same direction.”

Seems to be side-stepping the situation and in his last start, Cole’s spin rate on his pitches were down at least 6% across the board. The MLB has announced that starting Monday June 21st, pitchers caught applying any substances to the ball will be suspended for 10 games. I firmly believe that we will begin to see an extreme change in the MLB in the coming weeks. If pitchers have become used to using sticky products for years, imagine just how much their performances will decrease when forced to stop. I believe we will see ERA’s sky rocket as well as offensive numbers for batters; as batters have been having a historically bad year thus far (.239 league-wide batting average).