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Pitch doctoring should be the biggest scandal in sports

dylan604 5y ago
Right. "It's the pitch stupid." Every team looks for advantages. Under-inflating a ball, puttings some grease on the ball, juicing to be bigger/faster/stronger. Of all of these, we're supposed to feel that the pitch is the biggest scandal? Oh please.
- wearywanderer 5y ago
  From the article, > "80 to 90%” of pitchers are using it in some capacity" From wikipedia, > "Several players have suggested that drug use is rampant in baseball. David Wells stated that "25 to 40 percent of all Major Leaguers are juiced"." Juicing seems like a more severe issue to me, but I guess the article is saying that pitching substances are a "bigger" scandal because it's so prevalent.
woofcat 5y ago
Wouldn't this be super easy to crack down on? The umpires have the ability to throw players out of the game.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- oivey 5y ago
  Apparently the only way that umpires would check was if an opposing coach complained. Opposing coaches never complained because they knew their own players were doing it, too. The league stepping in insures there won’t be any fear of that sort of retaliation.
  - massysett 5y ago
    Umpires routinely touch balls because they take the ones that hit the dirt. Surely they’d notice then, unless the ones that hit the dirt aren’t adulterated for some reason.
    - ralph84 5y ago
      Catchers have gotten good at either tossing the balls out of play themselves, or doing a quick wipe of the ball before handing it to the ump. Watch how Yadier Molina rubs up the ball after it stuck to his chest protector. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGnS-H4Cc-4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGnS-H4Cc-4
      - jasonwatkinspdx 5y ago
        Wow is that blatant. You can tell everyone knows what's up, even the sportscasters, but no one wants to do jack.
      - spicybright 5y ago
        That's so pathetic. How can you call yourself a sport if you see players break rules so blatantly.
  - caddemon 5y ago
    Also, a whole range of substances are technically illegal, so even if you were using something less egregious than the recently engineered stuff you could still be retaliated against for reporting.
- umanwizard 5y ago
  It would be super easy for the NYPD to give me tickets for jaywalking too, but they don’t. The reason this was not enforced is because nobody cared and most people involved didn’t really consider it cheating, not because enforcement is difficult.
jdhn 5y ago
If this is the case, it seems kind of easy (if not a tad invasive) to solve. You have the MLB watch over the balls in a secure area, and when the pitcher and catcher go out, you check their pockets to see if they have anything like Pelican Grip Dip. If they do, they can't go out.
- blueline 5y ago
  Checking pockets isn’t enough. Pitchers have been hiding the substances on their hats or gloves or other sneaky places for years. It’s not like they just bring a jar of spider tack out there with them
  - germinalphrase 5y ago
    Why not do a face, hat, glove pat down? Boxers do it.
    - spywaregorilla 5y ago
      Are you going to do a chemical test of their hair and body surface too? To be totally clear, you could do this, but it's going to start an arms race of trickery.
      - dredmorbius 5y ago
        The ancient Greeks had olympic athletes compete nude as a check against cheating.
      - germinalphrase 5y ago
        You’re escalating just a bit from “hey, you got any gunk on your hat, head, mitt?” Watch an MMA match. It takes all of five seconds for a ref to run their hands over the competitors head, hands, etc. Which is certainly better than… nothing.
        spywaregorilla 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
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adolph 5y ago
Pitch doctoring is bad, but the national anthem is a tough one. It could be worse, look what happened to the Grammies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milli_Vanilli https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milli_Vanilli
- daseiner1 5y ago
  why is any of this relevant?
  - robbrown451 5y ago
    Probably a joke based on a different meaning of pitch, with "pitch doctoring" otherwise known as autotune.
gundmc 5y ago
They overcorrected with the changes to the ball. Not only do the balls fly a shorter distance, but they raised the seams as well, leading to more movement and break. Use of sticky substances absolutely is a big deal and the league is right to crack down, but it also gives them cover for their missteps with changing the ball. By raising the profile of the foreign substance abuses, it gives them ammunition when negotiating with the very powerful MLBPA.
- deelowe 5y ago
  After the mlb announced they were going to start checking for and taking action again foreign substances a couple of weeks ago, spin rates were down across several of the leagues big pitchers. It’s not the ball.
  - gundmc 5y ago
    Sticky substances affects spin rate, correct. I'm saying that there are other factors beyond that contributing to the record low levels of offensive production and proliferation of no hitters.
  - edmundsauto 5y ago
    The sticky tack increases spin, but the changes to the ball act as a multiplier. Bigger seams make the increased spin more effective; reduce coefficient of restitution makes a mistake less costly (so pitchers can take more strategic risks). TLDR, it's a multiplier on the spin rate issue.
javajosh 5y ago
This is good parable about how corruption becomes systemic. When integrity, and acting in good faith, becomes a weakness, it forces everyone to cheat or get cut. And on a larger scale, it gives integrity a bad name, a foolish position adopted only by suckers and losers who aren't willing to do whatever it takes to win. And so we descend even further into the cynical, amoral corner of the Nash equilibrium which is objectively worse for everyone. The league should give a mild suspension to everyone doing this now, with harsher suspensions in the future, and the introduction of consistent, rigorous testing. They need to make it easy to do the right thing. (Interestingly, a similar problem exists in the ping pong world. Players apply grippy, volatile chemicals to their paddles to increase grip on the ball. It got so bad that tournaments started doing gas analysis and sequestering paddles until match start to curb the practice. Imagine if the MLB did this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTCbpWmPzTY&t=0s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTCbpWmPzTY&t=0s)
- hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
  I like your framing, because this dynamic occurs in so many places. Pretty much everyone was doping in cycling during the Lance Armstrong era - if you weren't, it's highly unlikely you would have been remotely competitive. Similarly, there were tons of mortgage brokers in the mid 00s who could see that everything would end badly - but if you were an exec at a mortgage company and weren't willing to give a loan to anyone who could fog a mirror, you'd greatly underperform your competition in the short term, and you'd be canned long before the end game became apparent.
  - DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
    > If you were an exec at a mortgage company and weren't willing to give a loan to anyone who could fog a mirror, you'd greatly underperform your competition in the short term, and you'd be canned long before the end game became apparent. I would have assumed that loan-officer regulation would have meant that wouldn't happen. How many LOs kept their accreditation after the crash?
    - TheRealPomax 5y ago
wearywanderer 5y ago
Why can't the MLB just admit defeat on this issue and amend the rules to allow the use of these substances? When it comes to performance enhancing drugs (PEDs), I understand the ethical argument against it; PEDs have negative long term health consequences and clean pitchers shouldn't feel compelled to use PEDs to compete. But these sticky pitching substances don't seem to have that problem as far as I can tell.
- jahlove 5y ago
  Because it results in dramatically less hitting which is bad for the sport.
  - mensetmanusman 5y ago
    Make the distance between the pitching mound and home plate inversely correlated to the prior weeks batting average (with the goal of trying to reach .33)
  - llbeansandrice 5y ago
    > bad for the sport Citation needed.
  - wearywanderer 5y ago
    This is probably heresy, but maybe they could make the sport more exciting by issuing corked bats for more homeruns. And then maybe they could rename the sport to Blernsball...
- spywaregorilla 5y ago
  Better pitchers make the game substantially more boring. Strikeouts are at an all time high. People don't want to watch that.
- tshaddox 5y ago
  I’m not a big sports fan, but to me, directly modifying the sports equipment during a competition to break the basic rules of the game is way more blatantly egregious than consuming substances that improve physical performance.
justahuman74 5y ago
Give the pitchers standard issue "throwing" gloves, have them surrendered/inspected after each innings
- wearywanderer 5y ago
  I think players would revolt. Leather gloves require "break in" to be comfortable; without a break-in period they are very uncomfortable and could even cause blisters. And a glove broken in for one person isn't necessarily broken in for somebody else.
stefan_ 5y ago
Gerrit Cole on if he ever used Spider Tack while pitching: "I don't quite know how to answer that, to be honest...If MLB wants to legislate some more stuff, that's a conversation that we can have" https://twitter.com/snyyankees/status/1402379195007778821 https://twitter.com/snyyankees/status/1402379195007778821
- caddemon 5y ago
  It's incredible how much he stumbled over that question when it was so obviously coming. He eventually gave a politician non-answer but he looks like a deer in the headlights at first lol.
  - ashtonkem 5y ago
    I remain continually amazed how many people are incapable of just saying “no comment”.
    - Ensorceled 5y ago
      When asked "Are you cheating?" a "No comment" is pretty much a "Yes!", which is why they stumble.
      - ashtonkem 5y ago
        Yes, that’s true. But a short “no comment” also doesn’t give a damning and entertaining video clip of you stumbling around trying to say no without saying no. In general, if you're doing something bad, try to avoid going viral in the process. It’s the same reason why companies do it too. People forget a “no comment” faster than they forget an obvious lie or an insensitive corporate response.
        Ensorceled 5y ago
        Oh, I agree, but once they are wrong footed ... You would think they would have that covered in prep "If some asks if you are using stickum/tar/glue you say 'The league frowns on such activities and ...'"
Taniwha 5y ago
"In American sports" ..... already been a scandal elsewhere https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Australian_ball-tampering_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Australian_ball-tampering...
- makomk 5y ago
  Cricket has a long history of ball tampering in general: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_tampering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_tampering
- kosievdmerwe 5y ago
  Cricket is much murkier than baseball in this regard. Some amount of "ball tampering" is allowed in cricket, whereas, AFAIK none is in baseball. In cricket you can polish the ball against clothing and use sweat or saliva (with some caveats against sweetened saliva). Moreover, replacing the ball is a big event in cricket. But yeah there have been a couple of ball tampering scandals recently in cricket. One involving pants zippers and another involving sugar in pockets IIRC.
  - throwaway210222 5y ago
    > But yeah there have been a couple of ball tampering scandals recently in cricket. The Australian test team decided time-honoured subtleties such as sweetened-saliva-on-linen was not sufficiently effective: they literally brought sand-paper onto the field.
    - kosievdmerwe 5y ago
      Yeah that was amazingly egregious. At least you can excuse the presence of sweets and zippers on pants on the field. No way you're going to be able to explain sandpaper in your pockets.
      - Synaesthesia 5y ago
        In Cricket umpires inspect the balls quite often though, they would never permit a sticky substance on a cricket ball. You're allowed to scuff up one side and polish the other.
readonthegoapp 5y ago
I would be fine if baseball finished dying Ditto football Wouldn't be too heartbroken if basketball and soccer followed For the professional sports, they're all just so toxic for society We don't need any more help, thx
- db48x 5y ago
  Do you think that modern sports are worse than chariot racing in the Byzantine Empire? Since fans aren’t slaughtering each other by the thousands, I don’t think it will be too bad.
mensetmanusman 5y ago
It’s not a scandal, pitchers have been affecting the coefficient of friction of their balls for over a century. People should be able to do whatever they want to thaw ball / air interface that helps them perform at their peak.
- 9wzYQbTYsAIc 5y ago
  TL;DR they are using compounds that violate the current MLB rules.
- ProjectArcturis 5y ago
  Where does it end? Can a pitcher take a jar of peanut butter out to the mound with him to smear on the ball?
jollybean 5y ago
It's odd that the league doesn't have a rule where one coach can require the ump to do an 'equipment check' for whatever on any player. After the ball is caught by the catcher, the Ump can be required to check the ball. If it's sticky, the pitcher is out and the batter walks. Then they figure out what to do with the cheater. And the coach can do this twice a game or something like that.
- JoshTko 5y ago
  Coach should be able to call unlimited times as long as they are right.
- llbeansandrice 5y ago
  This is a rule. Coaches are allowed to call for a check whenever they want. There's a few (in)famous instances of it and the player is immediately thrown out of the game. Opposing coaches just don't bother because their guys are cheating too.
- csa 5y ago
  A coach can ask for a check. They will probably find something. The next inning, the opposing coach reciprocates and asks for a check, also probably finding something. Both coaches are incentivized not to check so that their pitcher is not checked.
  - jollybean 5y ago
    If the players faced consequences, then the coaches would be incentivized to check. Imagine if you could pop out your opponents best player because, well, he's cheating? I think I understand the 'unwritten rules' etc. but it seems maybe it's time to sort it out a little better. In a way that doesn't incentivize people to be apocalyptic about it.
  - savanaly 5y ago
    Wouldn't the person with the worse "best" pitcher be incentivized to check? It's a zero sum game. Plus they could always have their best pitcher not cheat, then call the other team on it, and now you get your best pitcher and the other team only gets their second-best pitcher.
listenallyall 5y ago
Everyone seems to say it's been going on forever. Why such a big issue now all of a sudden? Is this something that has only come to light due to ultra-high-def cameras and super-slow-mo that can actually measure spin rate and other minute details that was impossible to observe previously?
- joshmn 5y ago
  Pitchers have an incentive for a better grip on the ball. It's in a batter's best interest as well — getting hit by a 95MPH pitch is going to hurt. Adding a substance to the ball to increase spin rate via the aerodynamics — in return, increase horizontal and/or vertical movement — has now become almost a standard practice. That's what this issue is largely about. Obviously, a team can't challenge another pitcher saying "check his /jersey/cap/forearm/inside of belt/!" because their pitcher is probably doing it too.
  - thaumasiotes 5y ago
    > Obviously, a team can't challenge another pitcher saying "check his /jersey/cap/forearm/inside of belt/!" because their pitcher is probably doing it too. It is trivially easy to agree within the team on a game you're going to play clean, and challenge the other side during that game.
    - sokoloff 5y ago
      True, but that will likely cost your best hitter a fastball to the ribs.
- lbotos 5y ago
  I read the whole article, and they say it's because pitchers are striking out batters more often now because that increase in spin puts balls just out of the hittable range. But beyond that, Baseball has been struggling in the last 5 or so years with a "boring" factor, and they are trying to change the game to address it. To be frank, I think the biggest think hurting baseball is the cable blackouts. My father is a baseball maniac, and blackouts make it harder for him to watch the games he'd like to.
colordrops 5y ago
Why don't they just legalize using these sticky substances and even out the field? It doesn't seem to detract from the game much.
- rvba 5y ago
  The game is already a snoozefest. If nobody can hit the balls, it will be even worse. Checking gloves, gear, even by a doctor and banning cheaters is the way. But article states that this type of cheat is in the history of the sport.
  - llbeansandrice 5y ago
    You can just move the mound back like 6 inches. Not like the MLB does anything meaningful against cheaters like the Astros. Also MLB has been doctoring the ball for years and not telling the players. Juicing and de-juicing, raising the stitching. Manfred can do so many simple things to make the game more interesting that...isn't this. Pitch clock is the most straight forward.
- paulv 5y ago
  It is letting pitchers throw pitches that are on the edge of what they can control. Also, when pitchers throw balls the same way they have for years, changing the way balls move in ways the pitchers haven't been able to account for. The result is that the number of batters hit by pitches has gone up, and some of them have gotten seriously hurt (orbital bone fractures, broken noses, etc).
monocasa 5y ago
A friend of mine who works data science for one of the MLB teams was talking to me about this. Apparently enforcement is quietly coming down the pipeline. They're not doing enforcement out of nowhere because everyone knows that everyone is doing it, and it'd lead to the league enforcing against all teams simultaneously, which ultimately would be bad for the league itself to have at the very least none of it's star pitchers for some time period. Enforcement is coming though apparently and you'll be able to see it in the stats pretty clearly in hindsight. I don't agree with all MLB's descions, but at least in this case they're quietly optimizing for better games as best as they can given their massive bureaucracy which is what you want out of them.
- TwoBit 5y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if the MLB secretly notified the teams that they have x days to stop it because enforcement will commence thereafter. That way the MLB still looks clean but they get rid of the problem. MLB is very concerned about their image.
  - monocasa 5y ago
    Yeah, that's sort of what he was hinting. They probably won't announce anything, but it'll be clear in retrospect from the stats. They're already having to account for it in their data models during training.
    - NaOH 5y ago
      MLB has been very clear about their intentions, if not yet the specifics: From four days ago: >It’s been less than a week since Major League Baseball made known that it will begin to crack down on the use of foreign substances by pitchers... https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2021/06/mlb-gerrit-cole-trevor-bauer-foreign-substances-spin-rate.html https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2021/06/mlb-gerrit-cole-trevo... Some of the expected specifics to be enacted: https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2021/06/latest-on-mlbs-crackdown-on-illegal-subtances.html https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2021/06/latest-on-mlbs-crackd...
- 5y ago
worker767424 5y ago
I actually find the childish antics of Baseball--trick plays, fights, intentionally hitting players with pitching, sign stealing, sticky balls--to be a charming part of the game.
- iab 5y ago
  I feel like this is over 50% of Jomboy content, and I love it
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  I would at least draw a line between antics and assaulting someone.
  - TheAdamAndChe 5y ago
    Fist fights between men used to be a pretty normal way to resolve disputes.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      There are a lot of things that used to be pretty normal that no longer are.
      - TheAdamAndChe 5y ago
        This is very true. It makes me wonder, what has driven this change? Human nature didn't change over the course of a few decades.
        f-securus 5y ago
        Unleaded gasoline
- randycupertino 5y ago
  sounds like the cheesy reason I enjoy minor league hockey more than the NHL Pros... more fights! Showier playstyle as the minor players try to make names for themselves to move up etc.
jacobkg 5y ago
Lifelong Dodgers fan here. Have been following this scandal closely as Trevor Bauer is one of the big faces of it. He publicly denounced use of “sticky stuff” in 2017 and 2018 and tweeted about how much more rpm his pitches would get when he experimented with it. When nothing came of this his spin rate increased dramatically and he won the Cy Young award in 2020. This is his first year on the Dodgers and we have been watching pretty much every game. Bauer’s last four outings he has been much less dominant than earlier in the season. This comes after some of his game balls confiscated for analysis by MLB. We finally checked the stats today and sure enough his rpm’s are down again the last few starts. So the threat of enforcement does seem to be having an impact, at least in the short term. I’m glad the league is cracking down because after the Astros sign stealing scandal (of which the Dodgers were arguably one of the biggest victims) the last thing I want is for our team to now be the face of a new cheating scandal
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  > So the threat of enforcement does seem to be having an impact, at least in the short term. This is how the US solved the hijacking problem in the 1970s; threat to do occasional random searches of passengers. Apparently airport security reported finding abandoned firearms outside in the bushes whenever they put up the “passengers may be searched” signs.
  - TwoBit 5y ago
    Why would a hijacker abandon weapons? If their goal was hijacking and they found they were to be searched then why even board the plane? Just go back home with your weapon.
    - Spooky23 5y ago
      Hijacking was different in those days. It was often a means of political protest or transportation. Another thing to consider is non-hijackers carrying guns for their own reasons. It was fairly common for business travelers to carry a lot of cash, and carry a gun while doing so.
gnicholas 5y ago
> Brand-new major league baseballs are so slick that umpire attendants are tasked with rubbing them before games with special mud from a secret spot along a tributary of the Delaware River. Pitchers also have access to a bag of rosin, made from fir-tree sap, that lies behind the mound. Fun fact about the secret river mud, and also interesting that certain substances are specifically allowed.
watertom 5y ago
I find all professional sports to be an incredible waste of time and resources. The only benefit of professional sports is the enrichment of people who are already rich, the owners. Some athletes make money, but the vast majority don't really benefit, especially when considering the damage their bodies absorb. Some people would argue that professional sports has entertainment value, but knowing the that ultimate goal is the enrichment of the owners at the expense of the health and well being of the players is not something I find entertaining.
- beambot 5y ago
  Out of curiosity, can you list some of your leisure activities that involve other people...? Taken to extremes, most leisure activities have adverse effects on "professionals".
- nolantait 5y ago
  The kind of men particularly predisposed to aggression need an outlet that is not war or tearing each other apart. That is not a waste of time and resources. Probably does a lot of good to unite nations by also providing the same kind of outlet
- iab 5y ago
  Sports fans would speak to the shared experiences and bonding moments with both strangers and loved-ones that comes from sports fandom. The cost-benefit analysis for them and you differs greatly, although many would agree with you that franchises exist to make owners money (cue all the Oakland A’s fans)
- TwoBit 5y ago
  > especially when considering the damage their bodies absorb Not all sports are football. Most professional sports don't damage bodies significantly.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    Repetitive forceful motions cause damage too, such as pitching in baseball. Headers in soccer also cause CTE.
adventured 5y ago
The problem with hitting in MLB has nothing to do with pitch doctoring (which has been going on since the beginning of baseball, and was far worse in the 1970s and 1980s than it is today). It's because the batters are obsessed with launch angles, hit velocity and home runs. Hits per game has been dropping for 13-14 years now, as the culture in baseball has shifted toward swinging for home runs at all costs. Naturally strikeouts per game are up accordingly as batters go for broke. That's why hits are down but home runs are not. Home runs are still at steroid era peak levels, just like they have been for years now. This fact is intentionally being ignored in the discussion about pitch doctoring supposedly being the big cause of why batters suck at hitting now. They also need a convenient scapegoat for the new baseball MLB introduced this year and the way it has benefited pitchers more than hitters. They're trying to turn MLB into the NBA. The NBA no longer plays defense, they stand around chucking three pointers; it has become the WWE of basketball, it's a joke league (and ratings keep plunging properly, because it's not fun to watch all-star game scoring where nobody plays defense). MLB now openly advocates in favor of changing the game to juice ratings and scoring artificially (by eg restricting the ability to play defense, among other things). They allowed the steroid era to happen in the pursuit of ratings, they're going to screw the game up all over again.
- soared 5y ago
  This is incorrect. All else equal, a higher spin rate produces fewer hits than even a higher pitch speed. Banned substances can increase spin rate by ~500 rpm with little effort, meaning everyone doing it allows fewer hits. You’re correct that there are a lot of other factors at play, but foreign substance is proven to reduce hits, and increase players hit by balls (highest it’s ever been)
tw04 5y ago
The worst decision MLB ever made was refusing to take back Houston's world series trophy and place in the record books. They signaled to the world that cheating is OK. Not surprisingly, Gerritt Cole at the center of this seems to have started down this path immediately after joining the Astros.
- TwoBit 5y ago
  My guess is MLB did that because it would be a stain on their history. People still talk about the 1919 Black Sox scandal.
  - shawnz 5y ago
    I don't understand, why would they care about that? Are you saying people would be less interested in baseball if the MLB were upfront about the past instances of cheating?
- adventured 5y ago
  Records and stats broadly are huge parts of the core of the game's history. They made a far worse decision to both intentionally allow the steroid era and then take no action to eg protect/reclaim the records of Hank Aaron and Roger Maris. If you won't protect Hank Aaron's home run record, which was a staggering sports accomplishment, you're sure not going to take back a mere World Series trophy. After signaling they were ok with destroying such a large part of the game's history and what the fans enjoy, a Houston was inevitable. Houston ruined one year particularly, if they had contained it properly. Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, the steroid era overall and leaving that fraud in the record books, destroyed the game's history across more than half a century of competition. The long lineage in MLB is critical, being able to look back, measure the history, track the numbers, make a big deal of the feats, it's central to the game. Now a lot of it is garbage. How do you fix Bonds being the home run king? Juice the ball and let someone hit 80 home runs? Juice the ball and hope someone hits 800 for a career? It becomes a joke and they trapped themselves in it.
  - tw04 5y ago
chupchap 5y ago
How is ball tampering allowed in baseball? This is out right cheating in cricket. Lot of teams attempt it and when caught suspensions are the norm
jonahbenton 5y ago
The biggest scandals in sports, far and away, are: 1) the pervasive and increasing economic alignment with gambling 2) the economics of college football and basketball In terms of this story, as a former high school/college pitcher, to me this doesn't even warrant a meh. The analogies to Armstrong and steroid era are farsical. Tommy John surgery is more concerning.
- joe_fishfish 5y ago
  The first one, sure. But the second only applies to American sports.
  - jonahbenton 5y ago
    True, and that's generally true with baseball as well.
lamontcg 5y ago
Bit of a microcosm of the way our society seem to be going.
duncanawoods 5y ago
Aw, I thought this was going to be about football pitches... John Beck did a fair amount of "pitch doctoring" at Cambridge United. He would play an exclusively long ball game, hoofing it to a set of 7ft tall strikers. To help with this, he demanded that the grass be grown long in the corners to hold up the ball and basically ploughed the rest of the pitch to kill any attempt at a passing game. He was nicknamed "Dracula" for sucking the life out of the game :)
- physicsguy 5y ago
  https://backofthenet.fandom.com/wiki/John_Beck https://backofthenet.fandom.com/wiki/John_Beck > The corners of the pitch developed their own eco-systems and it was all too common to see a player go to take a corner only to be mauled by a cougar.
- bencollier49 5y ago
  When Curzon Ashton (a wonderful low-league team from Greater Manchester) managed to get through to the second round of the FA Cup, drawing AFC Wimbledon, the manager decreed that the pitch lines at the home ground be narrowed to the minimum permissible width, in order to hamper Wimbledon's more refined style of play down the wings.
  - kitd 5y ago
    > Wimbledon's more refined style Imagine having a less-refined style than Wimbledon
    - bencollier49 5y ago
      It's great stuff for the kids to watch. You can get a seat near the touchline and it teaches them how to play real physical football. :-)
rossmohax 5y ago
OMG, TIL they spin ball to 2800 RPM just by throwing it.
amelius 5y ago
If some sports allow magnesium to be used on hands (e.g. gymnasts on the high bar), then shouldn't sticky substances be simply allowed?
- Ensorceled 5y ago
  If some sports allow players to tackle the player with the ball (e.g. football, rugby), then shouldn't basketball?
  - amelius 5y ago
    No, because it's easily detectable from a distance.
    - Ensorceled 5y ago
      Magnesium isn't allowed because it is not detectable as, in fact, it's very detectable. Your analogy is flawed ... let it go.
huffmsa 5y ago
> From the dugout, players and coaches shake their heads as they listen to pitchers’ deliveries But their own pitchers are doing it too.
MisterBastahrd 5y ago
This is a huge problem for baseball. Baseball used to be the most popular sport in America. Now it's third. I don't think soccer will ever actually catch it, but that's mostly because MLS is run by the same sort of stubborn people as MLB. Nobody ever really remembers teams with great pitching. They don't really give them names. There's no "Murderer's Row" of pitching in MLB history. There's a reason for that. A home run is something everyone instantly understands. New to the game, old to the game, whatever, it gets people excited. So does hitting and base running. People want to see people hit the ball and score runs in baseball. A walk-off homerun to end a big game is remembered forever by everyone who watched it. Pitching, by contrast, is usually only fully appreciated in retrospect. You don't throw a no-hitter until the last out is counted. Same for a perfect game. A perfect game in the second inning is just a second inning. A home run in the second inning is something that gets everyone out of their seats. The final strikeout of a big game is remembered by fans of the winning team. but it's a footnote for everyone else. So for entertainment's sake, if you're going to either have great pitching or great hitting, you damned well should be focused as an executive to make sure that the hitting is as good as it can get, because the people who care the most about your sport at this point are boomers, stat nerds, and bookies. My 86 year old grandmother who passed 3 years ago? She LOVED to watch baseball with my grandfather. Likewise, my other grandfather would watch whenever he could except for when a John Wayne movie was on. My parents couldn't care less, and in my social group of about 40 boys, only two watched the sport on a regular basis.
BrandoElFollito 5y ago
As someone in Europe whose knowledge of baseball is from US movies: are there technical barriers to test for a coating substance? I believe that the ball does not belong to the team that pitches it, right? It is given to them by the referee (?). So what's the problem to check if there is any substance on it after the game (the part where one team has control of the ball) and if there is anything, well they are disqualified. Or is it that nobody is interested in changing the status quo?
- umanwizard 5y ago
  Dozens of balls are used per game, not just one, but yeah in principle they could check them. The only reason I can imagine it being hard is the balls get pretty banged up from dirt, bats, sweat, etc. — not sure how well illegal grip substances would survive.
- csin 5y ago
  Know nothing about baseball. What I can gather from the article: "Pitchers head in there before games to swipe tongue depressors, which they use to apply their sticky stuff to wherever they choose to hide it, then return afterward to grab rubbing alcohol to dissolve the residue." "Once baseballs are out of play, they are supposed to be thrown into the home dugout, where they can be collected by MLB for analysis. Some teams, observers note, have tried tossing especially sticky balls into the visitors’ dugout."
- jbeam 5y ago
  They have been checking balls as part of their information gathering to see the extend of the problem, but remember there is no one ball. The ball is replaced pretty much any time it does anything other than go directly from the pitchers hand into the catcher’s mitt. Also any time it is fouled off, or hit into play, etc. If you watch an at bat and the ball hits the dirt, you will see the catcher get a new ball from an ump. So the "sticky stuff", as it is sort of being childishly called throughout the league, is usually on the pitcher somewhere — some like to put it on the brim of their cap, some in the glove, some in their belt, you get the idea. Frankly, they have been very blatant about it all season. After every new ball they “go to their cap” or “go to their glove” to get more grip again. It’s been pretty blatant, actually, pitchers have been really thumbing their nose at the league. Example: https://twitter.com/jomboymedia/status/1399904704293969921 https://twitter.com/jomboymedia/status/1399904704293969921
thrower123 5y ago
If you're not cheating in baseball, you aren't trying. It's such a boring game, made worse by sabermetrics, that this kind of meta game is the only remaining interest. Tweak the balls. Tweak the bats. Sign-stealing. Tweak batting approaches. Fiddle with the mound. Chase ever better steroids. Without that arms race, it'd be horrifically dull.
bryanrasmussen 5y ago
I actually find the NFL race-norming more scandalous https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/31554110/nfl-halt-race-norming-review-black-claims-1-billion-concussion-settlement https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/31554110/nfl-halt-race-n... but I suppose that is a scandal 'about' sports, whereas pitch doctoring is 'in' sports.
- baseballdork 5y ago
  Everything about that story is scandalous. Besides the obvious racial bias against black athletes, there also this: > More than 2,000 NFL retirees have filed dementia claims, but fewer than 600 have received awards, according to the most recent report. How does this compare with the general population? This seems like a crazy amount of dementia. Add the instances of CTE and it really seems like maybe we should just let football die off.
- Breza 5y ago
  Thank you for sharing that article, I hadn't seen it. Terrible!
  - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
    I posted it to HN 6 days ago but no uptake, just reposted it if anyone wants to discuss https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27503168 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27503168
sunstone 5y ago
If batters are allowed sticky stuff to get a better grip on the bat then why wouldn't pitchers be allowed sticky stuff to get a better grip on the ball?
MauroIksem 5y ago
If they're all cheating is it really cheating?
- _fat_santa 5y ago
  Still cheating but less scandalous in my opinion. If it came out that one team had an edge over another team it's one thing, but if both teams are cheating in the same way, it's harder to prove that either got "cheated out of" anything.

Right. "It's the pitch stupid." Every team looks for advantages. Under-inflating a ball, puttings some grease on the ball, juicing to be bigger/faster/stronger. Of all of these, we're supposed to feel that the pitch is the biggest scandal? Oh please.

wearywanderer 5y ago
From the article, > "80 to 90%” of pitchers are using it in some capacity" From wikipedia, > "Several players have suggested that drug use is rampant in baseball. David Wells stated that "25 to 40 percent of all Major Leaguers are juiced"." Juicing seems like a more severe issue to me, but I guess the article is saying that pitching substances are a "bigger" scandal because it's so prevalent.

woofcat 5y ago

Wouldn't this be super easy to crack down on? The umpires have the ability to throw players out of the game.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
oivey 5y ago
Apparently the only way that umpires would check was if an opposing coach complained. Opposing coaches never complained because they knew their own players were doing it, too. The league stepping in insures there won’t be any fear of that sort of retaliation.
- massysett 5y ago
  Umpires routinely touch balls because they take the ones that hit the dirt. Surely they’d notice then, unless the ones that hit the dirt aren’t adulterated for some reason.
  - ralph84 5y ago
    Catchers have gotten good at either tossing the balls out of play themselves, or doing a quick wipe of the ball before handing it to the ump. Watch how Yadier Molina rubs up the ball after it stuck to his chest protector. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGnS-H4Cc-4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGnS-H4Cc-4
    - jasonwatkinspdx 5y ago
      Wow is that blatant. You can tell everyone knows what's up, even the sportscasters, but no one wants to do jack.
    - spicybright 5y ago
      That's so pathetic. How can you call yourself a sport if you see players break rules so blatantly.
- caddemon 5y ago
  Also, a whole range of substances are technically illegal, so even if you were using something less egregious than the recently engineered stuff you could still be retaliated against for reporting.
umanwizard 5y ago
It would be super easy for the NYPD to give me tickets for jaywalking too, but they don’t. The reason this was not enforced is because nobody cared and most people involved didn’t really consider it cheating, not because enforcement is difficult.

jdhn 5y ago

If this is the case, it seems kind of easy (if not a tad invasive) to solve. You have the MLB watch over the balls in a secure area, and when the pitcher and catcher go out, you check their pockets to see if they have anything like Pelican Grip Dip. If they do, they can't go out.

blueline 5y ago
Checking pockets isn’t enough. Pitchers have been hiding the substances on their hats or gloves or other sneaky places for years. It’s not like they just bring a jar of spider tack out there with them
- germinalphrase 5y ago
  Why not do a face, hat, glove pat down? Boxers do it.
  - spywaregorilla 5y ago
    Are you going to do a chemical test of their hair and body surface too? To be totally clear, you could do this, but it's going to start an arms race of trickery.
    - dredmorbius 5y ago
      The ancient Greeks had olympic athletes compete nude as a check against cheating.
    - germinalphrase 5y ago
      You’re escalating just a bit from “hey, you got any gunk on your hat, head, mitt?” Watch an MMA match. It takes all of five seconds for a ref to run their hands over the competitors head, hands, etc. Which is certainly better than… nothing.
      - spywaregorilla 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

adolph 5y ago

Pitch doctoring is bad, but the national anthem is a tough one. It could be worse, look what happened to the Grammies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milli_Vanilli https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milli_Vanilli

daseiner1 5y ago
why is any of this relevant?
- robbrown451 5y ago
  Probably a joke based on a different meaning of pitch, with "pitch doctoring" otherwise known as autotune.

gundmc 5y ago

They overcorrected with the changes to the ball. Not only do the balls fly a shorter distance, but they raised the seams as well, leading to more movement and break. Use of sticky substances absolutely is a big deal and the league is right to crack down, but it also gives them cover for their missteps with changing the ball. By raising the profile of the foreign substance abuses, it gives them ammunition when negotiating with the very powerful MLBPA.

deelowe 5y ago
After the mlb announced they were going to start checking for and taking action again foreign substances a couple of weeks ago, spin rates were down across several of the leagues big pitchers. It’s not the ball.
- gundmc 5y ago
  Sticky substances affects spin rate, correct. I'm saying that there are other factors beyond that contributing to the record low levels of offensive production and proliferation of no hitters.
- edmundsauto 5y ago
  The sticky tack increases spin, but the changes to the ball act as a multiplier. Bigger seams make the increased spin more effective; reduce coefficient of restitution makes a mistake less costly (so pitchers can take more strategic risks). TLDR, it's a multiplier on the spin rate issue.

javajosh 5y ago

This is good parable about how corruption becomes systemic. When integrity, and acting in good faith, becomes a weakness, it forces everyone to cheat or get cut. And on a larger scale, it gives integrity a bad name, a foolish position adopted only by suckers and losers who aren't willing to do whatever it takes to win. And so we descend even further into the cynical, amoral corner of the Nash equilibrium which is objectively worse for everyone. The league should give a mild suspension to everyone doing this now, with harsher suspensions in the future, and the introduction of consistent, rigorous testing. They need to make it easy to do the right thing. (Interestingly, a similar problem exists in the ping pong world. Players apply grippy, volatile chemicals to their paddles to increase grip on the ball. It got so bad that tournaments started doing gas analysis and sequestering paddles until match start to curb the practice. Imagine if the MLB did this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTCbpWmPzTY&t=0s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTCbpWmPzTY&t=0s)

hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
I like your framing, because this dynamic occurs in so many places. Pretty much everyone was doping in cycling during the Lance Armstrong era - if you weren't, it's highly unlikely you would have been remotely competitive. Similarly, there were tons of mortgage brokers in the mid 00s who could see that everything would end badly - but if you were an exec at a mortgage company and weren't willing to give a loan to anyone who could fog a mirror, you'd greatly underperform your competition in the short term, and you'd be canned long before the end game became apparent.
- DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
  > If you were an exec at a mortgage company and weren't willing to give a loan to anyone who could fog a mirror, you'd greatly underperform your competition in the short term, and you'd be canned long before the end game became apparent. I would have assumed that loan-officer regulation would have meant that wouldn't happen. How many LOs kept their accreditation after the crash?
  - TheRealPomax 5y ago

wearywanderer 5y ago

Why can't the MLB just admit defeat on this issue and amend the rules to allow the use of these substances? When it comes to performance enhancing drugs (PEDs), I understand the ethical argument against it; PEDs have negative long term health consequences and clean pitchers shouldn't feel compelled to use PEDs to compete. But these sticky pitching substances don't seem to have that problem as far as I can tell.

jahlove 5y ago
Because it results in dramatically less hitting which is bad for the sport.
- mensetmanusman 5y ago
  Make the distance between the pitching mound and home plate inversely correlated to the prior weeks batting average (with the goal of trying to reach .33)
- llbeansandrice 5y ago
  > bad for the sport Citation needed.
- wearywanderer 5y ago
  This is probably heresy, but maybe they could make the sport more exciting by issuing corked bats for more homeruns. And then maybe they could rename the sport to Blernsball...
spywaregorilla 5y ago
Better pitchers make the game substantially more boring. Strikeouts are at an all time high. People don't want to watch that.
tshaddox 5y ago
I’m not a big sports fan, but to me, directly modifying the sports equipment during a competition to break the basic rules of the game is way more blatantly egregious than consuming substances that improve physical performance.

justahuman74 5y ago

Give the pitchers standard issue "throwing" gloves, have them surrendered/inspected after each innings

wearywanderer 5y ago
I think players would revolt. Leather gloves require "break in" to be comfortable; without a break-in period they are very uncomfortable and could even cause blisters. And a glove broken in for one person isn't necessarily broken in for somebody else.

stefan_ 5y ago

Gerrit Cole on if he ever used Spider Tack while pitching: "I don't quite know how to answer that, to be honest...If MLB wants to legislate some more stuff, that's a conversation that we can have" https://twitter.com/snyyankees/status/1402379195007778821 https://twitter.com/snyyankees/status/1402379195007778821

caddemon 5y ago
It's incredible how much he stumbled over that question when it was so obviously coming. He eventually gave a politician non-answer but he looks like a deer in the headlights at first lol.
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  I remain continually amazed how many people are incapable of just saying “no comment”.
  - Ensorceled 5y ago
    When asked "Are you cheating?" a "No comment" is pretty much a "Yes!", which is why they stumble.
    - ashtonkem 5y ago
      Yes, that’s true. But a short “no comment” also doesn’t give a damning and entertaining video clip of you stumbling around trying to say no without saying no. In general, if you're doing something bad, try to avoid going viral in the process. It’s the same reason why companies do it too. People forget a “no comment” faster than they forget an obvious lie or an insensitive corporate response.
      - Ensorceled 5y ago
        Oh, I agree, but once they are wrong footed ... You would think they would have that covered in prep "If some asks if you are using stickum/tar/glue you say 'The league frowns on such activities and ...'"

Taniwha 5y ago

"In American sports" ..... already been a scandal elsewhere https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Australian_ball-tampering_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Australian_ball-tampering...

makomk 5y ago
Cricket has a long history of ball tampering in general: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_tampering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_tampering
kosievdmerwe 5y ago
Cricket is much murkier than baseball in this regard. Some amount of "ball tampering" is allowed in cricket, whereas, AFAIK none is in baseball. In cricket you can polish the ball against clothing and use sweat or saliva (with some caveats against sweetened saliva). Moreover, replacing the ball is a big event in cricket. But yeah there have been a couple of ball tampering scandals recently in cricket. One involving pants zippers and another involving sugar in pockets IIRC.
- throwaway210222 5y ago
  > But yeah there have been a couple of ball tampering scandals recently in cricket. The Australian test team decided time-honoured subtleties such as sweetened-saliva-on-linen was not sufficiently effective: they literally brought sand-paper onto the field.
  - kosievdmerwe 5y ago
    Yeah that was amazingly egregious. At least you can excuse the presence of sweets and zippers on pants on the field. No way you're going to be able to explain sandpaper in your pockets.
    - Synaesthesia 5y ago
      In Cricket umpires inspect the balls quite often though, they would never permit a sticky substance on a cricket ball. You're allowed to scuff up one side and polish the other.

readonthegoapp 5y ago

I would be fine if baseball finished dying Ditto football Wouldn't be too heartbroken if basketball and soccer followed For the professional sports, they're all just so toxic for society We don't need any more help, thx

db48x 5y ago
Do you think that modern sports are worse than chariot racing in the Byzantine Empire? Since fans aren’t slaughtering each other by the thousands, I don’t think it will be too bad.

mensetmanusman 5y ago

It’s not a scandal, pitchers have been affecting the coefficient of friction of their balls for over a century. People should be able to do whatever they want to thaw ball / air interface that helps them perform at their peak.

9wzYQbTYsAIc 5y ago
TL;DR they are using compounds that violate the current MLB rules.
ProjectArcturis 5y ago
Where does it end? Can a pitcher take a jar of peanut butter out to the mound with him to smear on the ball?

jollybean 5y ago

It's odd that the league doesn't have a rule where one coach can require the ump to do an 'equipment check' for whatever on any player. After the ball is caught by the catcher, the Ump can be required to check the ball. If it's sticky, the pitcher is out and the batter walks. Then they figure out what to do with the cheater. And the coach can do this twice a game or something like that.

JoshTko 5y ago
Coach should be able to call unlimited times as long as they are right.
llbeansandrice 5y ago
This is a rule. Coaches are allowed to call for a check whenever they want. There's a few (in)famous instances of it and the player is immediately thrown out of the game. Opposing coaches just don't bother because their guys are cheating too.
csa 5y ago
A coach can ask for a check. They will probably find something. The next inning, the opposing coach reciprocates and asks for a check, also probably finding something. Both coaches are incentivized not to check so that their pitcher is not checked.
- jollybean 5y ago
  If the players faced consequences, then the coaches would be incentivized to check. Imagine if you could pop out your opponents best player because, well, he's cheating? I think I understand the 'unwritten rules' etc. but it seems maybe it's time to sort it out a little better. In a way that doesn't incentivize people to be apocalyptic about it.
- savanaly 5y ago
  Wouldn't the person with the worse "best" pitcher be incentivized to check? It's a zero sum game. Plus they could always have their best pitcher not cheat, then call the other team on it, and now you get your best pitcher and the other team only gets their second-best pitcher.

listenallyall 5y ago

Everyone seems to say it's been going on forever. Why such a big issue now all of a sudden? Is this something that has only come to light due to ultra-high-def cameras and super-slow-mo that can actually measure spin rate and other minute details that was impossible to observe previously?

joshmn 5y ago
Pitchers have an incentive for a better grip on the ball. It's in a batter's best interest as well — getting hit by a 95MPH pitch is going to hurt. Adding a substance to the ball to increase spin rate via the aerodynamics — in return, increase horizontal and/or vertical movement — has now become almost a standard practice. That's what this issue is largely about. Obviously, a team can't challenge another pitcher saying "check his /jersey/cap/forearm/inside of belt/!" because their pitcher is probably doing it too.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  > Obviously, a team can't challenge another pitcher saying "check his /jersey/cap/forearm/inside of belt/!" because their pitcher is probably doing it too. It is trivially easy to agree within the team on a game you're going to play clean, and challenge the other side during that game.
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    True, but that will likely cost your best hitter a fastball to the ribs.
lbotos 5y ago
I read the whole article, and they say it's because pitchers are striking out batters more often now because that increase in spin puts balls just out of the hittable range. But beyond that, Baseball has been struggling in the last 5 or so years with a "boring" factor, and they are trying to change the game to address it. To be frank, I think the biggest think hurting baseball is the cable blackouts. My father is a baseball maniac, and blackouts make it harder for him to watch the games he'd like to.

colordrops 5y ago

Why don't they just legalize using these sticky substances and even out the field? It doesn't seem to detract from the game much.

rvba 5y ago
The game is already a snoozefest. If nobody can hit the balls, it will be even worse. Checking gloves, gear, even by a doctor and banning cheaters is the way. But article states that this type of cheat is in the history of the sport.
- llbeansandrice 5y ago
  You can just move the mound back like 6 inches. Not like the MLB does anything meaningful against cheaters like the Astros. Also MLB has been doctoring the ball for years and not telling the players. Juicing and de-juicing, raising the stitching. Manfred can do so many simple things to make the game more interesting that...isn't this. Pitch clock is the most straight forward.
paulv 5y ago
It is letting pitchers throw pitches that are on the edge of what they can control. Also, when pitchers throw balls the same way they have for years, changing the way balls move in ways the pitchers haven't been able to account for. The result is that the number of batters hit by pitches has gone up, and some of them have gotten seriously hurt (orbital bone fractures, broken noses, etc).

monocasa 5y ago

A friend of mine who works data science for one of the MLB teams was talking to me about this. Apparently enforcement is quietly coming down the pipeline. They're not doing enforcement out of nowhere because everyone knows that everyone is doing it, and it'd lead to the league enforcing against all teams simultaneously, which ultimately would be bad for the league itself to have at the very least none of it's star pitchers for some time period. Enforcement is coming though apparently and you'll be able to see it in the stats pretty clearly in hindsight. I don't agree with all MLB's descions, but at least in this case they're quietly optimizing for better games as best as they can given their massive bureaucracy which is what you want out of them.

TwoBit 5y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if the MLB secretly notified the teams that they have x days to stop it because enforcement will commence thereafter. That way the MLB still looks clean but they get rid of the problem. MLB is very concerned about their image.
- monocasa 5y ago
  Yeah, that's sort of what he was hinting. They probably won't announce anything, but it'll be clear in retrospect from the stats. They're already having to account for it in their data models during training.
  - NaOH 5y ago
    MLB has been very clear about their intentions, if not yet the specifics: From four days ago: >It’s been less than a week since Major League Baseball made known that it will begin to crack down on the use of foreign substances by pitchers... https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2021/06/mlb-gerrit-cole-trevor-bauer-foreign-substances-spin-rate.html https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2021/06/mlb-gerrit-cole-trevo... Some of the expected specifics to be enacted: https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2021/06/latest-on-mlbs-crackdown-on-illegal-subtances.html https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2021/06/latest-on-mlbs-crackd...
5y ago

worker767424 5y ago

I actually find the childish antics of Baseball--trick plays, fights, intentionally hitting players with pitching, sign stealing, sticky balls--to be a charming part of the game.

iab 5y ago
I feel like this is over 50% of Jomboy content, and I love it
lotsofpulp 5y ago
I would at least draw a line between antics and assaulting someone.
- TheAdamAndChe 5y ago
  Fist fights between men used to be a pretty normal way to resolve disputes.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    There are a lot of things that used to be pretty normal that no longer are.
    - TheAdamAndChe 5y ago
      This is very true. It makes me wonder, what has driven this change? Human nature didn't change over the course of a few decades.
      - f-securus 5y ago
        Unleaded gasoline
randycupertino 5y ago
sounds like the cheesy reason I enjoy minor league hockey more than the NHL Pros... more fights! Showier playstyle as the minor players try to make names for themselves to move up etc.

jacobkg 5y ago

Lifelong Dodgers fan here. Have been following this scandal closely as Trevor Bauer is one of the big faces of it. He publicly denounced use of “sticky stuff” in 2017 and 2018 and tweeted about how much more rpm his pitches would get when he experimented with it. When nothing came of this his spin rate increased dramatically and he won the Cy Young award in 2020. This is his first year on the Dodgers and we have been watching pretty much every game. Bauer’s last four outings he has been much less dominant than earlier in the season. This comes after some of his game balls confiscated for analysis by MLB. We finally checked the stats today and sure enough his rpm’s are down again the last few starts. So the threat of enforcement does seem to be having an impact, at least in the short term. I’m glad the league is cracking down because after the Astros sign stealing scandal (of which the Dodgers were arguably one of the biggest victims) the last thing I want is for our team to now be the face of a new cheating scandal

ashtonkem 5y ago
> So the threat of enforcement does seem to be having an impact, at least in the short term. This is how the US solved the hijacking problem in the 1970s; threat to do occasional random searches of passengers. Apparently airport security reported finding abandoned firearms outside in the bushes whenever they put up the “passengers may be searched” signs.
- TwoBit 5y ago
  Why would a hijacker abandon weapons? If their goal was hijacking and they found they were to be searched then why even board the plane? Just go back home with your weapon.
  - Spooky23 5y ago
    Hijacking was different in those days. It was often a means of political protest or transportation. Another thing to consider is non-hijackers carrying guns for their own reasons. It was fairly common for business travelers to carry a lot of cash, and carry a gun while doing so.

gnicholas 5y ago

> Brand-new major league baseballs are so slick that umpire attendants are tasked with rubbing them before games with special mud from a secret spot along a tributary of the Delaware River. Pitchers also have access to a bag of rosin, made from fir-tree sap, that lies behind the mound. Fun fact about the secret river mud, and also interesting that certain substances are specifically allowed.

watertom 5y ago

I find all professional sports to be an incredible waste of time and resources. The only benefit of professional sports is the enrichment of people who are already rich, the owners. Some athletes make money, but the vast majority don't really benefit, especially when considering the damage their bodies absorb. Some people would argue that professional sports has entertainment value, but knowing the that ultimate goal is the enrichment of the owners at the expense of the health and well being of the players is not something I find entertaining.

beambot 5y ago
Out of curiosity, can you list some of your leisure activities that involve other people...? Taken to extremes, most leisure activities have adverse effects on "professionals".
nolantait 5y ago
The kind of men particularly predisposed to aggression need an outlet that is not war or tearing each other apart. That is not a waste of time and resources. Probably does a lot of good to unite nations by also providing the same kind of outlet
iab 5y ago
Sports fans would speak to the shared experiences and bonding moments with both strangers and loved-ones that comes from sports fandom. The cost-benefit analysis for them and you differs greatly, although many would agree with you that franchises exist to make owners money (cue all the Oakland A’s fans)
TwoBit 5y ago
> especially when considering the damage their bodies absorb Not all sports are football. Most professional sports don't damage bodies significantly.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  Repetitive forceful motions cause damage too, such as pitching in baseball. Headers in soccer also cause CTE.

adventured 5y ago

The problem with hitting in MLB has nothing to do with pitch doctoring (which has been going on since the beginning of baseball, and was far worse in the 1970s and 1980s than it is today). It's because the batters are obsessed with launch angles, hit velocity and home runs. Hits per game has been dropping for 13-14 years now, as the culture in baseball has shifted toward swinging for home runs at all costs. Naturally strikeouts per game are up accordingly as batters go for broke. That's why hits are down but home runs are not. Home runs are still at steroid era peak levels, just like they have been for years now. This fact is intentionally being ignored in the discussion about pitch doctoring supposedly being the big cause of why batters suck at hitting now. They also need a convenient scapegoat for the new baseball MLB introduced this year and the way it has benefited pitchers more than hitters. They're trying to turn MLB into the NBA. The NBA no longer plays defense, they stand around chucking three pointers; it has become the WWE of basketball, it's a joke league (and ratings keep plunging properly, because it's not fun to watch all-star game scoring where nobody plays defense). MLB now openly advocates in favor of changing the game to juice ratings and scoring artificially (by eg restricting the ability to play defense, among other things). They allowed the steroid era to happen in the pursuit of ratings, they're going to screw the game up all over again.

soared 5y ago
This is incorrect. All else equal, a higher spin rate produces fewer hits than even a higher pitch speed. Banned substances can increase spin rate by ~500 rpm with little effort, meaning everyone doing it allows fewer hits. You’re correct that there are a lot of other factors at play, but foreign substance is proven to reduce hits, and increase players hit by balls (highest it’s ever been)

tw04 5y ago

The worst decision MLB ever made was refusing to take back Houston's world series trophy and place in the record books. They signaled to the world that cheating is OK. Not surprisingly, Gerritt Cole at the center of this seems to have started down this path immediately after joining the Astros.

TwoBit 5y ago
My guess is MLB did that because it would be a stain on their history. People still talk about the 1919 Black Sox scandal.
- shawnz 5y ago
  I don't understand, why would they care about that? Are you saying people would be less interested in baseball if the MLB were upfront about the past instances of cheating?
adventured 5y ago
Records and stats broadly are huge parts of the core of the game's history. They made a far worse decision to both intentionally allow the steroid era and then take no action to eg protect/reclaim the records of Hank Aaron and Roger Maris. If you won't protect Hank Aaron's home run record, which was a staggering sports accomplishment, you're sure not going to take back a mere World Series trophy. After signaling they were ok with destroying such a large part of the game's history and what the fans enjoy, a Houston was inevitable. Houston ruined one year particularly, if they had contained it properly. Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, the steroid era overall and leaving that fraud in the record books, destroyed the game's history across more than half a century of competition. The long lineage in MLB is critical, being able to look back, measure the history, track the numbers, make a big deal of the feats, it's central to the game. Now a lot of it is garbage. How do you fix Bonds being the home run king? Juice the ball and let someone hit 80 home runs? Juice the ball and hope someone hits 800 for a career? It becomes a joke and they trapped themselves in it.
- tw04 5y ago

chupchap 5y ago

How is ball tampering allowed in baseball? This is out right cheating in cricket. Lot of teams attempt it and when caught suspensions are the norm

jonahbenton 5y ago

The biggest scandals in sports, far and away, are: 1) the pervasive and increasing economic alignment with gambling 2) the economics of college football and basketball In terms of this story, as a former high school/college pitcher, to me this doesn't even warrant a meh. The analogies to Armstrong and steroid era are farsical. Tommy John surgery is more concerning.

joe_fishfish 5y ago
The first one, sure. But the second only applies to American sports.
- jonahbenton 5y ago
  True, and that's generally true with baseball as well.

lamontcg 5y ago

Bit of a microcosm of the way our society seem to be going.

duncanawoods 5y ago

Aw, I thought this was going to be about football pitches... John Beck did a fair amount of "pitch doctoring" at Cambridge United. He would play an exclusively long ball game, hoofing it to a set of 7ft tall strikers. To help with this, he demanded that the grass be grown long in the corners to hold up the ball and basically ploughed the rest of the pitch to kill any attempt at a passing game. He was nicknamed "Dracula" for sucking the life out of the game :)

physicsguy 5y ago
https://backofthenet.fandom.com/wiki/John_Beck https://backofthenet.fandom.com/wiki/John_Beck > The corners of the pitch developed their own eco-systems and it was all too common to see a player go to take a corner only to be mauled by a cougar.
bencollier49 5y ago
When Curzon Ashton (a wonderful low-league team from Greater Manchester) managed to get through to the second round of the FA Cup, drawing AFC Wimbledon, the manager decreed that the pitch lines at the home ground be narrowed to the minimum permissible width, in order to hamper Wimbledon's more refined style of play down the wings.
- kitd 5y ago
  > Wimbledon's more refined style Imagine having a less-refined style than Wimbledon
  - bencollier49 5y ago
    It's great stuff for the kids to watch. You can get a seat near the touchline and it teaches them how to play real physical football. :-)

rossmohax 5y ago

OMG, TIL they spin ball to 2800 RPM just by throwing it.

amelius 5y ago

If some sports allow magnesium to be used on hands (e.g. gymnasts on the high bar), then shouldn't sticky substances be simply allowed?

Ensorceled 5y ago
If some sports allow players to tackle the player with the ball (e.g. football, rugby), then shouldn't basketball?
- amelius 5y ago
  No, because it's easily detectable from a distance.
  - Ensorceled 5y ago
    Magnesium isn't allowed because it is not detectable as, in fact, it's very detectable. Your analogy is flawed ... let it go.

huffmsa 5y ago

> From the dugout, players and coaches shake their heads as they listen to pitchers’ deliveries But their own pitchers are doing it too.

MisterBastahrd 5y ago

This is a huge problem for baseball. Baseball used to be the most popular sport in America. Now it's third. I don't think soccer will ever actually catch it, but that's mostly because MLS is run by the same sort of stubborn people as MLB. Nobody ever really remembers teams with great pitching. They don't really give them names. There's no "Murderer's Row" of pitching in MLB history. There's a reason for that. A home run is something everyone instantly understands. New to the game, old to the game, whatever, it gets people excited. So does hitting and base running. People want to see people hit the ball and score runs in baseball. A walk-off homerun to end a big game is remembered forever by everyone who watched it. Pitching, by contrast, is usually only fully appreciated in retrospect. You don't throw a no-hitter until the last out is counted. Same for a perfect game. A perfect game in the second inning is just a second inning. A home run in the second inning is something that gets everyone out of their seats. The final strikeout of a big game is remembered by fans of the winning team. but it's a footnote for everyone else. So for entertainment's sake, if you're going to either have great pitching or great hitting, you damned well should be focused as an executive to make sure that the hitting is as good as it can get, because the people who care the most about your sport at this point are boomers, stat nerds, and bookies. My 86 year old grandmother who passed 3 years ago? She LOVED to watch baseball with my grandfather. Likewise, my other grandfather would watch whenever he could except for when a John Wayne movie was on. My parents couldn't care less, and in my social group of about 40 boys, only two watched the sport on a regular basis.

BrandoElFollito 5y ago

As someone in Europe whose knowledge of baseball is from US movies: are there technical barriers to test for a coating substance? I believe that the ball does not belong to the team that pitches it, right? It is given to them by the referee (?). So what's the problem to check if there is any substance on it after the game (the part where one team has control of the ball) and if there is anything, well they are disqualified. Or is it that nobody is interested in changing the status quo?

umanwizard 5y ago
Dozens of balls are used per game, not just one, but yeah in principle they could check them. The only reason I can imagine it being hard is the balls get pretty banged up from dirt, bats, sweat, etc. — not sure how well illegal grip substances would survive.
csin 5y ago
Know nothing about baseball. What I can gather from the article: "Pitchers head in there before games to swipe tongue depressors, which they use to apply their sticky stuff to wherever they choose to hide it, then return afterward to grab rubbing alcohol to dissolve the residue." "Once baseballs are out of play, they are supposed to be thrown into the home dugout, where they can be collected by MLB for analysis. Some teams, observers note, have tried tossing especially sticky balls into the visitors’ dugout."
jbeam 5y ago
They have been checking balls as part of their information gathering to see the extend of the problem, but remember there is no one ball. The ball is replaced pretty much any time it does anything other than go directly from the pitchers hand into the catcher’s mitt. Also any time it is fouled off, or hit into play, etc. If you watch an at bat and the ball hits the dirt, you will see the catcher get a new ball from an ump. So the "sticky stuff", as it is sort of being childishly called throughout the league, is usually on the pitcher somewhere — some like to put it on the brim of their cap, some in the glove, some in their belt, you get the idea. Frankly, they have been very blatant about it all season. After every new ball they “go to their cap” or “go to their glove” to get more grip again. It’s been pretty blatant, actually, pitchers have been really thumbing their nose at the league. Example: https://twitter.com/jomboymedia/status/1399904704293969921 https://twitter.com/jomboymedia/status/1399904704293969921

thrower123 5y ago

If you're not cheating in baseball, you aren't trying. It's such a boring game, made worse by sabermetrics, that this kind of meta game is the only remaining interest. Tweak the balls. Tweak the bats. Sign-stealing. Tweak batting approaches. Fiddle with the mound. Chase ever better steroids. Without that arms race, it'd be horrifically dull.

bryanrasmussen 5y ago

I actually find the NFL race-norming more scandalous https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/31554110/nfl-halt-race-norming-review-black-claims-1-billion-concussion-settlement https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/31554110/nfl-halt-race-n... but I suppose that is a scandal 'about' sports, whereas pitch doctoring is 'in' sports.

baseballdork 5y ago
Everything about that story is scandalous. Besides the obvious racial bias against black athletes, there also this: > More than 2,000 NFL retirees have filed dementia claims, but fewer than 600 have received awards, according to the most recent report. How does this compare with the general population? This seems like a crazy amount of dementia. Add the instances of CTE and it really seems like maybe we should just let football die off.
Breza 5y ago
Thank you for sharing that article, I hadn't seen it. Terrible!
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  I posted it to HN 6 days ago but no uptake, just reposted it if anyone wants to discuss https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27503168 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27503168

sunstone 5y ago

If batters are allowed sticky stuff to get a better grip on the bat then why wouldn't pitchers be allowed sticky stuff to get a better grip on the ball?

MauroIksem 5y ago

If they're all cheating is it really cheating?

_fat_santa 5y ago
Still cheating but less scandalous in my opinion. If it came out that one team had an edge over another team it's one thing, but if both teams are cheating in the same way, it's harder to prove that either got "cheated out of" anything.