Pitchers cheating with sticky stuff, a breakdown

joe west the crew chief says hey can you

take the hat off he says my hat

why he says oh that spot it's just the

rosin over there

and then the sunscreen on my arm and

then when i touch both i touch my hat

it leaves a mark and joey says okay yeah

but can you just take it off and put on

a new one because we don't want anyone

getting

mad at you for it and like well you're

you seem like the only one being mad

right now schwilt comes out and he's

like about to give him his hat and then

he yells at joe west and joe says get

out of here

and shell's like now he's now the shield

gets on his soapbox because this is such

a big problem in baseball

and he's saying don't do that to this

kid there's no reason to do that to him

there's guys that are doing much worse

that's the problems the guys digging

into their hands

throwing wiffle ball [ __ ] those are the

guys you got to worry about

not this dude who's got sunscreen and

rosin touching his hat

and so he gives them uh an earful he's

mad and joe west is kind of like dude i

set the record

oh and gigos gets a new hat there and

you can see him say

it's [ __ ] stupid and then he puts the

new hat on his head

it fits perfectly so good job whoever

had the replacement hat ready to go

catcher hands that to that person ump

says come here little boy

come here yup gonna need you take this

hat guard it with your goddamn life says

oh my god that's intense

they go and lock it in the umpire room

as evidence did it affect

the rest of the inning for diego's no

shook out abreu

and then he strikes out your mean nice

[ __ ]

nicer pitch yeah don't think it affected

him there that

is nasty now joe west actually talked to

the media and gave answers which is good

a lot of umpires don't do that

they asked who initiated the

investigation he said that second base

umpire

saw it and rather than it become a

confrontation rather than allow

tony larusso or whoever to yell they're

like let's just have him change hat

that way there's nothing bad going on

that's basically the gist of what he

says

and then they say why was he not ejected

and he said well we didn't want to put

him

in jeopardy we did it as a defensive

mechanism for everybody

we want the players to play the game we

don't want anybody to be accused of

cheating or any of that stuff

so it's smarter just to remove the cap

then let him pitch and have somebody

come out and complain

which is fair enough i guess the bigger

issue

is that there's a bigger issue at hand

and that's what shilt was upset about

this is baseball's dirty little secret

and it's the wrong time in the wrong

arena

to expose it so shilts ain't wrong this

is the early stages of something very

big

that's gonna be a loud story and i guess

this is the start of it

we've been trying to cover it as best we

can on our podcast talking baseball

we've done a lot of

conversations about it but the general

public doesn't seem to care

because for years and years and years

batters have told

fans it's okay if pitchers use some

stuff to get a better grip

we'd rather them have control over the

ball than hit us and there's

a difference between grip and spin and

that's the big thing right now

having grip on the ball having their

hands like tack and feel good

batters don't really care but what

they're doing now

is they're helping with spin they're

literally

gluing their fingertips to the ball

so that their fingertips stay on as long

as possible to get that final spin

that's that's the new thing

that's what people are upset about it's

not grip

it's spin did you have some sunscreen

does he use rosin to help lap possibly

are these things that baseball really

wants to crack down on

no it's not i know that completely first

hand

from the commissioner's office sunscreen

and rosin is absurdly sticky and

you're telling me like i can't protect

my body from these harmful uv rays like

yes i'm gonna put sunscreen on my arm

and i'm gonna put roz in where i'm at

trevor bauer and he's been at the

forefront of this for a while in 2018 he

said

yeah i touch my arm it's sunscreen mixed

with rosin someone asked him is that

allowed he said

both are legal substances the

combination of the two is technically

illegal

gray area for sure but he's admitting to

it on twitter

in the act saying yeah i do it and no

one cares and i mean that's why you have

these funny clips of

lance lynn bathing himself in rosin just

rubbing it all over his body

no one has cared about that for the

longest time and no one will care about

that

as long as we go they care about the new

[ __ ] these pitchers are doing

there are people that are effectively

and not even trying to hide essentially

flipping the bird at the league with how

they're cheating

in this game with concocted substances

if you have this substance that isn't

pine tar

or sunscreen or rosin or whatever it is

and you're actively going to that so you

can turn your

2500 slider into a 29 or 3000 slider for

that one pitch

that is cheating in that report they

talk about having baseballs come out

where there's like literally like

strings of glue

coming off the ball and that's not okay

because that's cheating so there you

have a manager on record saying it's

cheating you have two

active pitchers saying it's cheating we

had an

article come out jt romuto a catcher in

the league

he basically said we gotta crack down on

this stuff it's not fair

you see pitchers out there all game long

doing this touching their mitt

they're not doing anything about it if

they crack down it would help

he says he sees it all the time josh

donaldson

was tweeting with dallas braden he said

stop cheating so now you got another

player

saying that this is cheating dallas

braden says we both know the difference

between pine tar rosin and what the new

stuff

is donaldson says i agree i have an

entire catalog

of videos of these guys cheating it's

coming out so jd can't wait to see that

we had a bunch of other people on record

saying that when you watch these guys

from the dugout

you can almost hear the ball ripping out

of their gloves

because they're gluing their fingers to

the glove adam duvall

said it's pretty frustrating picking up

a foul ball and seeing it covered in

sticky stuff

so you just got more and more players

coming out on the record

stating their displeasure and calling it

cheating but you know

who was doing this two years ago and no

one was listening to

trevor bauer in 2014 he tweeted out

asking for help hey anyone else that

likes science how do i

increase my spin rate on pitches he

already had figured out that spin

rate is what makes a pitch effective he

just wanted to figure out how to

increase it

and then he went to the lab and he

cracked the code in 2019 he said foreign

substance has been shown to increase

spin rate up to 500 rpm that's

revolutions

per minute 2600 spin rate is is really

good

3 000 is like top crazy top tier

he said bauer said the evidence is

undeniable followed that up

he said if only there was a quick way to

increase spin rate like what if you

could trade for a player knowing that

you could bump his spin rate up a couple

rpm

overnight imagine the steals he said

it's not fair i would just like to play

the game on a fair playing field and it

is far from that right now

easy solution is just legalize sick

sticky substances so everyone can

complete fairly

so way back bower was the one

advocating for making this illegal or

legal or

mlb just saying something about it and

no one did

anything bower even was giving out the

formulas he said pine tar

firm grip coca-cola boiled melted

together in a metal coke can maybe some

rosin

just to guess he even went on record and

said that brent strom

taught him to use pelican bat wax on his

glove in the strings and in the

fingers to get a better grip on the ball

back when he was 14 french drums the

pitching coach for the astros

no one cared in 2018 trevor bauer

tweeted

that he knew for a fact his fastball

could get 3000 rpm if he were using

sticky stuff

at the time he tweeted that he had zero

mlb fastballs at 3000 rpm or higher he

had thrown

18 000 over seven seasons

zero 3000 rpm or higher he even tweeted

out a great plan he said that

it's very clear that sticky stuff

increases spin rate and increased spin

rate

equals more effective pitches more

effective pitches

equals greater chance for success and

future compensation

so bauer was the first person to be

screaming this saying it's unfair

realizing i guess they don't care

but now everyone seems to care a lot

because it's just gotten out of hand

what mlb

did before this season is they said they

were going to collect balls and look at

statcast data to try and crack

down on the illegal foreign substances

being used by pitchers

and then they just made it about bauer

they said bowers investigated by mlb for

using foreign substances on multiple

balls

per the report the balls had visible

markings and were sticky

the one dude who was trying his hardest

to tell you you got to take control of

this or it's going to become a problem

they now

name the main person which is all

[ __ ]

because they actually went to each

clubhouse and told the players we're

collecting data but don't worry

we're not going to do anything about it

this year we just want to figure out

what's being used and how much it's

helping

smlb is just collecting baseballs to do

a study like they're not doing anything

with them no one's under investigation

or no one's

like just these these gossip bloggers

just out here writing stuff to try to

throw water on my name or

whatever i don't know just personal

vendettas i guess

and the manager of the a's bob melvin

backed that up

he said this year they're looking at

baseballs to kind of take stock on maybe

doing something uniform

down the road as far as what substance

could be used that's what bob melvin

said

and every pitcher that's doing this is

being as obvious

as obvious can be no one cares

mlb has basically given them the free

year

saying they're not going to get anyone

in trouble the collective bargaining

agreement is coming up next year

my guess is mlb is doing a study seeing

how much this works

as they negotiate the cba this offseason

maybe they try to implement a new rule

or a standard substance or something but

seems the rest of this season pitchers

have free reign

and the more free rein they have the

more we're gonna have batters

other pitchers who aren't doing this and

managers

complain about it because yeah pitchers

are

are just using they're super gluing

their fingers to the ball

it is very much like a corked bat oh i

had a bad inning i need to get more glue

on my fingers

oh i didn't hit that ball far i'll just

go use the bat that i

made illegally