OT as F: A Philosophical Debate about cheating in baseball
Its OT season. Not much else to talk about so I thought I'd launch a debate about cheating in Major League Baseball. As many MLB fans know this season the Commissioner's office has decided to take on the issue of pitchers using foreign substances like Spider Tack on the balls they pitch to increase the spin rate and make the ball harder to see and hit (Feel free to enter in quotes from Harris in Major League about Bardol, Vegicil and snot). Many know this was a dirty little secret that the league turned a blind eye to for years and many teams encouraged by having the equipment managers provide whatever substances the pitchers wanted to use. Now with batting averages plummeting and the game becoming hard to watch, the League wants to take it on. I have a pair of questions for the board:
1) Is this, for lack of a better word, bullcrap and the practice should go on or has, as many writers have put it, the game become unwatchable because the pitchers are too good and something must be done.
2) How do you view pitchers like Gerritt Cole and Trevor Bauer when their turn comes for Hall of Fame consideration. Will we look at this generation of pitchers with an asterisk the way that the HOF looks at hitters like Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire and pitchers like Roger Clemens from the steroid era and create an unofficial ban on them.
1) enforce the rules and stop the practice OR change the rules if you don't care so you level the playing field. I don't get the point of having rules you don't enforce. (also looking at you NCAA)
2) no asterisk. i tend to view how did the players compare vs. other in the same era. If you dominate relative to your peers in the spider tack era where the belief is everyone is using spider tack, then you're probably dominating those same peers without spider tack. I think the generational comparisons are pointless with or without spider tack.
As an extension of your point #1, to me the macro issue here is baseball's "unwritten rules". And I'm not just talking about looking the other way at doctored balls, although that certainly is part of it.
I agree, enforce the rules. If you're going to have a rule enforce it. Or change it.
But additionally, cut this shit out with baseball's unwritten rules. If CC Sabathia doesn't like it that you just took him yard and tossed your bat. Then CC needs to not leave one hanging over the plate. He doesn't get to put one "in your back" the next time up. Suspend him for a year. Get rid of all the vigilantism in baseball. If I decide to take the rules into my own hands in basketball, and do something reckless that could injure you. I'm getting suspended for a long time.
So much of the legacy of baseball's unwritten rules is sordid to begin with. Why perpetuate the archaeic nonsense?
It also has the unintended consequence of adding some "fun" into the game and maybe, just maybe, appealing to these damn zoomers runnin' around with their NFTs and their K-Pops.
But to the original question, agree with Kev. Enforce your rules MLB. And while you're at it, stop letting vigilantism enforcement of unwritten rules. Get your shit together. #blessyouboys
I think those unwritten rules wrt throwing at guys have started to deteriorate. Much to managers' hate, umpires issue warnings to both teams even without a HBP, pitchers are quicker to get tossed - sometimes even if it was a breaking ball that slipped, etc. They don't get it all, but definitely more than 10 years ago.
That's good progress.
I think the only other 'unwritten rules' are things like not stealing when you're up 10+ late.
I don't like the term "unwritten rules" because really it refers to one thing - the retaliatory HBP. So, let's just talk about that.
Batting averages have dropped and strikeout rates have gone up because of launch angle and launch velocity. Essentially players are trying to do in baseball what Bryson Dechambeau is doing in golf, however, the baseball players are swinging as hard as they can at a moving target. Lets not forget that the strike zone is smaller now than it ever has been (at least in the way that it is called) so theoretically it should be easier for hitters.
People will probably disagree with me, but pitchers aren't actually throwing that much harder than they did even in the 80s. Radar guns used to pick up the ball as it crossed home plate, now they pick it up right out of the hand of the pitcher.
Analytics is the reason for this plane and simple. Same with the trend in rising 3 pointers in the NBA.
edit: I understand this isn't really what you were asking for, however, the strikeout rates are the reason the MLB is doing anything about it in the first place. They dug their own graves prioritizing the home run over everything else.
All your points are correct and well said, +1
People will probably disagree with me, but pitchers aren't actually throwing that much harder than they did even in the 80s.
Is it a question of velocity? I thought this was a question of spin rates being increased, and hence the drop of the ball. Found this interesting physics explainer:
https://www.drivelinebaseball.com/2016/11/spin-rate-what-we-know-now/
You are correct specifically in this discussion. My response was more concerning the broadened discussion about velocity as well. Having a family member that both pitched in the majors as well as recently as last season was a pitching coach in the Pirates organization, I can tell you he is of the opinion that it is almost necessary at this point with how the baseballs are made compared to when he played. He said that they are so slick that it is nearly impossible to grip, and having the opportunity to use the same balls they do vs. what I threw with in college, I have to agree with him. Add to that some cooler temperatures and it becomes nearly impossible to grip the baseball.
Anyway, all of that being said, I just went on a rant in my first post because I think they are destroying baseball. There is an interesting podcast with Theo Epstein with the Ringer regarding what they are doing to try and make the game more popular, and he brings up a lot of good stuff. If you're a baseball fan I highly recommend it!
The Pitching velocity has increased. I saw a stat on the MLB Network that they used to throw in the high 80’s and now it’s in the mid/high 90’s. John Kruk said (a few years ago) “if you fire the ball straight out of a canon, hitters will find a way to time it”.
Spin rate has changed the game. Write a rule that says all pitchers have to use the same sticky product OR make the balls “less slick”.
De plane, De plane!
I guess it’s debatable but it seems to me that I generally see more high strikes called than like 20-30 years ago. Hence the increased usage of 4-seamers to get above the uppercut swing planes that are so popular these days. And it also seems like fewer low strikes are called. So maybe the zone is about the same size just moved up?
I have noticed more movement across the board on most pitches, which seems attributable to the spin increase.
I remember Kenny Rogers, one example of a guy who apparently used a substance back about 15-20 yrs ago. I recall he was busted in a game with it in his cap. But it seems more widely used the last few years with better science introducing tackier stuff. I think there needs to a crackdown, bust ‘em all.
Edit (added pics), see base of thumb:
Pitchers are throwing significantly harder than they did 10 years ago, let alone 30 years ago. Speed is up I think over 2 mph, which from 60ft away is a ton. In addition, it's the speed of the "off-speed" stuff that has really shot up. Guys throwing a slider 92 with a ton of movement is basically unhittable.
In addition, the shift has cut down on the BA of balls in play significantly.
Teams have responded by saying "we can't reliably hit these pitches, might as well go big or go home". That's why hitting is all homers or Ks now. Remove one or both of these pitching advantages. and you'll see hitting start to pick up again.
I’d disagree that hitters are swinging for the fences because they can’t reliably make contact. For the most part, fans want to see home runs, they’re exciting. They’re not interested in watching teams play small ball anymore. Organizations don’t really care about fundamental hitting, there’s no such thing as “hit it where it’s thrown” anymore, hence the shifts. You’d think when you shift that you’d pitch inside to induce pulled grounders, but teams shift and then pound outside because they know almost everyone is a pull hitter now.
I agree with everything you said, except about the strike zone being smaller. It's larger, and inconsistent, that's another reason strike outs are up.
They dug their own graves prioritizing the home run over everything else.
Teams wouldn't prioritize homeruns if they weren't the effective route to scoring runs.
You paint a black and white pitcher when I think there's a lot more gray. Do we talk more about launch angles - yes. But we do that because the analytics say that homeruns are the better path to creating runs and thus winning the game. It's not like its some macho "Me want hit ball far, not do wimpy bunt." Bunting is ineffective at the major league level where the defense is spectacular. Groundballs are outs in the major leagues.
I don't know your source on the idea that pitchers have always thrown this hard (and it's a radar gun usage issue). There's a lot of data that says that pitchers throw harder now, on average.
Also, managers have ditched old school pitching strategies in favor of strategies that increase the efficacy of their pitching (i.e. openers, loogy's). And they are simply reacting to the data. Teams score the most runs in the first inning. That's statistically well documented. So, enter the era of openers where you can let a guy loose on the most difficult part of the lineup and not have him save any gas in the tank for later.
It's all reactions to data and progressive coaches being willing to make decisions different than the norm that are supported by data. At some point, a bunch of coaches I'm sure told JD Martinez that he had to hit line drives and work on that. And then finally someone came along and knew what the data said and JD was turned loose to hit the ball in the air. But it was data driven, not some marketing ploy because 'homeruns are sexy.'
As a die hard baseball fan of all levels here are my 2 cents
1) It is not bullcrap, it never should have been allowed to let slide to begin with
2) Anybody caught willfully cheating should not be allowed in the hall of fame
On point #2: What if MLB nods and winks at cheating (e.g., juicing for home runs, which the fans love) for years?
When you say "juicing for home runs", if you mean the league using juiced balls, then obviously that's not on the players. If you're talking about players using PED's, they should absolutely not be in the HOF. The problem there though is that hundreds of players were on PED's in the late 90's and 2000's, but didn't get caught. I hate to say it, but I would all but guarantee that both Pudge Rodriguez and Magglio Ordonez were both using PED's while in Detroit, just to name a few of our own!
I'm very much suggesting that the MLB had a good idea that PEDs were being used and decided to do nothing for a long time because the fans found the resulting games entertaining. In that scenario I don't blame the players (batters *and* pitchers) for cheating.
Yeah, I guess I'd have to agree with you. In '98 when McGwire and Sosa were chasing each other it was pretty obvious that both of them were using PED's, yet neither one of them were ever tested that season.
As Bonds so famously said “it (juice) doesn’t help the eyes, you still have to see the ball to hit it”. He changed his swing to hit home runs after Mac and Sosa got all the attention . He may have been the first to change his launch angle.
Bonds was almost surely on juice, his rapid physique change was/is nearly impossible without ‘help’. He was excellent at picking up spin and knowing the strike zone without a doubt. If changing his lunch angle was all it took, he and many others would’ve done that forever, launch angle isn’t exactly new.
This is the dumbest argument about PEDs. Of course they don't make you a better hitter. But if you happen to be a good hitter, the ball will go 10% farther. (Statistic entirely made up. No scientific citation available.)
I'm almost certain that Babe Ruth NEVER cheated.
except on his diet!
WHAAAATTTT
I’m torn on Bauer, because he appears to have made an effort to get MLB to address the foreign-substance problem to no response. Even going so far as to (likely) increasing his spin rate for a single inning in a start and then telling people to look into it afterwards. I feel for him in some respects.
I have done a full 360 on Bauer since I first saw him pitch for UCLA. I loved how quirky he was and dominant. The weird sun bleached hat, wearing a full winter coat in the dugout when it was 100 degrees, doing those weird shoulder blade exercises etc...
Then he got to the MLB and turned into a megadouche. Or maybe he just got a microphone in front of him and he was the same as he ever was.
But now he's become a champion for "fun" in baseball. Tweeting about how much he loves when guys celebrate home runs, getting pissed when teams retaliate and going after guys who were using the sticky stuff. Finally to get so fed up he basically threw up a middle finger to the MLB and said fine if you aren't going to enforce it, I'm going to go so far the other direction that you have to address it.
Black Sox cheating, Houston Astros cheating, or Pete Rose cheating?
In all seriousness, foreign substances on baseballs is as old as time. That's the least of MLB's cheating problems. Catch and punish the pitchers dumb enough to get caught. A significant majority of them will over time. To those who don't and are caught after putting together illustrious careers, fine the hell out of them and put asterisks next to their legacies.
I'm pretty much in your camp. With millions of dollars at stake as well as your family's well being, there is nothing you can do to curtail the urge to cheat a system that gives you a reasonable opportunity to get away with it. I'll stop short of "if your not cheating you're not trying", but this is not uchre or monopoly for Christ sake.
NCAA enforces more things than MLB!
I played a few seasons of minor league ball. As long as there's money involved and people keeping score, certain people are going to cheat. It's life and you overcome obstacles. It will never be a fair and even playing field. You just enjoy it that much more when you don't sacrifice your morals for success.
didnt they deaden the baseball too? It is pretty unwatchable. I only check scores
Sports are the ultimate reality television. We as the viewer or ticket buyer are to believe that when our favorite teams steps between the lines in competition, everyone is on a level playing field. When that's not the case, then sports turns more into WWE. Which yes, is still entertainment, but it has a scripted narrative.
So I would say I'm very against pitchers doctoring their balls up with sticky substances to gain an advantage. ESPN actually had a really good article about all of this. It is paywalled by ESPN+. But here is the link https://www.espn.com/mlb/insider/story/_/id/31596907/spider-tack-goo-cops-open-secret-answering-20-questions-mlb-foreign-substance-mess
First off, those saying it doesn't increase a pitchers velocity are missing the point. This is about spin rate, not velocity. The more RPMs, the more the ball will move, meaning braking balls break harder and farther and 4 seam fastballs rise. I don't blame the pitchers. They were given a free pass to get away with it and they took that pass and ran. So I wouldn't hold it against them. Baseball often times idolizes their biggest cheater. Example being Gaylord Perry.
I actually really like what Trevor Bauer did. He first called baseball and Gerrit Cole out on twitter in 2018. He then pitched an inning with a substance to prove how much his spin rate improved and openly talked about it. He then tested a bunch of substances and posted his results online to prove again, what is going on in baseball. After baseball continued to ignore him, he made the declaration that if he used sticky stuff he would be the best pitcher in baseball. He went out in 2020 and won the Cy Young with a dramatically increased spin rate on all his pitches.
1) yes. everyone does it, and not just for extra spin, but control. The entire reason the umps didn’t look at stuff unless asked by an opposing manager is because that manager knows his guy has the same stuff on him — a ball isn’t even a real game ball until it’s mudded by the equipment staff anyway. I don’t consider the foreign substances cheating at all.
2) They need to burn down the entire building if you don’t think these guys should be in.
Everyone is doing it to some extent. Overall it's advantage to the pitcher with the increased velocity, but there is a player safety aspect as well - some pitchers can't control without foreign substance assistance. Worse than a boring baseball game is one where balls are flying at batters and umpires every inning. Clearly every manager knows their own pitchers are using stuff, so they're not going to call out opponents, since it would be mutually assured pitching staff destruction.
The solution is to allow some standard substance to the pitchers, since they're using it anyway, but try to limit the impact. Not sure how, but maybe if they're allowed a bit of pine tar they won't have to use spider tack, or whatever. I don't know exactly, but I think a compromise is better than an outright ban that everyone is going to ignore.
If pitchers still have elevated spin rates, and batting average/OBP continue to decline, you have to shrink the strike zone more. It's the least disruptive, least sacred measurement in the game. It's different game to game, and been defined in a variety of ways over the years. Change a few strikes per inning into balls, and pitchers will have to pitch more to the middle of the zone, and batters will put more in play. The game will rebound and everyone will be happy.
Cheating is wrong. Always. End of story.
Well said! I'm sure glad Putin never cheated in an election. (Stealing Robert Kraft's Super Bowl ring or injecting Alexander Litvinenko with plutonium or poisoning Alexei Navalny with a nerve agent are noteworthy because they are technically not "cheating".)
I also think the shift has a heck of a lot to do with lower BA's and fewer runs. That's easy to solve. Say all infielders must stand inside an arc separating infield from outfield and you must keep the 1B and 2B infielders right of second base and SS and 3B left of second base until a ball is batted.
If you want to put your infielders in the outfield, who cares? Just say two IF have to be on both sides of 2B at the start of the play. If you want to play with 3 infielders and 4 outfielders that is fine, but your SS has to be on the left side of the field--he can't go sit in RF.
I never understand the arguments against the shift. If the hitter faces a shift, learn to hit the ball the other way. They're giving you a big hole on the other side of the diamond to do just that. Practice the art of hitting to learn to use what the defense is giving you and decrease your tendencies.
Right. Because major league baseball players, who are the BEST hitters on the planet, don't spend any time practicing their hitting.
I'm sure the problem is all that no one knows how to hit anymore.
It IS against the rules, but MLB has been allowing it. They need to crack down, prohibit it and enforce it. Right now anyone NOT doing it is stupid, as it clearly gives you an advantage and everyone is doing it.
I don't blame anyone for doing it. It is up to MLB to set specific rules for what is allowed and then enforce the rules.
Yep. This is 100% on MLB (Manfred). Enforce the damn rules!
The difference between being an MLB pitcher and a AAA pitcher is literally several million dollars. That's a hell of an incentive! So OF COURSE pitchers are taking advantage of these non-enforced rules.
I have two views on this to share. One is mine and the other comes from a former MLB outfielder.
My take is that when you look at a box score these days, there often are few hits per game and when you look at the batting averages, they are quite low. I believe the league avg. right now is a paltry .237. That makes it really tough just to get a hit. With that said, I don't mind it so much as I really like watching games that involve pitching and defense. The 60 HR 'roid era didn't move the needle for me. That felt more like watching a local softball game with a bunch of large ass dudes.
My two boys play travel ball here in FL. They are coached by a former 1st round draft pick and MLB player. As a hitter, he said he would rather the pitchers use a substance as it gives the pitcher much more control. He feels safer when the pitcher has a better grip on a high 90's fastball. I thought that was an interesting take from a hitter, while other current hitters feel otherwise given the dominance of pitching lately.
The WCWS, even without Michigan, was about 8000 times as exciting as any MLB game I've watched in the past 5 years that didn't involve some insane play. "home run or bust" with today's pitching and strikeout rate is a major snoozefest.
This doesn't make any sense. Softball, especially at the highest level in college, is far more home run or bust than MLB. The top pitchers in college give up very few hits and can pitch all the time, so often the only way to score is swinging for the fences. Alex Drain discussed this on the MGoPodcast with David. The WCWS had multiple games that were either shutouts or where one team scored fewer than 3 runs, and it was worse in the super regionals, with plenty of low-scoring games. There was even a perfect game, which if you want to see hitting and scoring is definitely a snoozefest.
You can criticize baseball for the decrease in hitting making it less exciting. But to compare it to softball is either confirmation bias at work or just making stuff up for the sake of an argument without basis in reality.
Yeah WCWS games often feature elite pitchers throwing 15+ Ks in a game while hitters flair uselessly at the plate. The pitching dimensions in college softball were designed for MUCH slower pitchers than the modern game has.
Honestly, they need to move the mound back significantly. But that would disrupt the game so much I doubt it will happen.
I think what is a valid argument for softball being exciting to watch (even though the HR/K issue is just as big in elite NCAA softball as MLB) is that when balls are in play the game is insanely fast.
Infield plays are always lightning fast. I'm always astounded by the speed of the infield play in high level fast pitch softball.
Maybe the solution is to add 5-feet to the basepaths. Make the diamond bigger, cut down the angles for infielders, create more infield hits. As it stands now, softball infielders don't really move left to right because they are close enough to the plate to drastically eliminate angles for the ball to get through (thinking especially of 3B).
How do you view pitchers like Gerritt Cole
It's interesting to say the least how Cole's spin rate is down now.
“I don’t know how to quite answer that, to be honest,’’ Cole said before moving into a tacit acknowledgement of MLB’s open secret.
“There’s customs and practices that have been passed down from older players to younger players,’’ Cole said, adding that “there are some things that are certainly out of balance in that regard.