6 ms·

Baseball's dirty little secret is out – we decided to experiment

144 points by doublerebel 5y ago

User23 5y ago
It’s been out for at least a year when The MVP Machine was published.
abnry 5y ago
I just love Trevor Bauer in all of this.
mastazi 5y ago
There are similar issues in cricket, here in Australia we had a ball tampering scandal in 2018, involving adhesive tape and sandpaper: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Australian_ball-tampering_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Australian_ball-tampering...
- tardismechanic 5y ago
  Correction: The Australian cricket team was involved in ball tampering but the incident happened in South Africa.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
dang 5y ago
Related from yesterday: Pitch doctoring should be the biggest scandal in sports - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27496095 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27496095 - June 2021 (183 comments)
void_mint 5y ago
Ball tampering has been a thing since baseball's inception. It's nothing new.
- cryptoz 5y ago
  Sure, tech isn't new either. People have been doing startups and tech forever, it's nothing new. Better not have any discussions about tech since it's old news. Humans have always been innovating.
  - void_mint 5y ago
    Right but when people post about a new tech, they don't say "Tech's dirty little secret is out". This post is pretending ball tampering is a secret. What's the secret if it's been a thing forever and has always been public?
    - cryptoz 5y ago
      > Right but when people post about a new tech, they don't say "Tech's dirty little secret is out". Sure they do, in droves: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Tech%27s+dirty+little+secret+is+out%22 https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Tech%27s+dirty+little+sec... > What's the secret if it's been a thing forever and has always been public? I don't think the assumptions in your question are true. I'd wager that a _lot_ more people are talking about ball tampering now than ever before.
      - void_mint 5y ago
        > Sure they do, in droves: And a post about "Tech's Dirty Little Secret" would be appropriately downvoted off the front page of this website. > I don't think the assumptions in your question are true. I'd wager that a _lot_ more people are talking about ball tampering now than ever before. How can it be a secret if "more people are talking about ball tampering than ever before"? Where's the secret?
        cryptoz 5y ago
        The secret is out. That's the point. Not many people were talking about it before. The "secret". Now a lot of people are talking about it. The secret is now "out". There have been lots of highly-upvoted and heavily-commented "dirty secret is out" posts on HN's front page. I don't want to argue so I'll just leave it at that.
Animats 5y ago
So use a new ball for each pitch. Sell the used balls to fans. Maybe with a video clip of that play. It would probably be profitable.
- lbotos 5y ago
  It's not on the balls alone, it's on the pitcher's gear. Glove. Hat. Etc. If you watch the clip halfway through the article, you can see a pitcher bent over liberally applying the bullfrog sunscreen to their arms to mix with the rosin.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- DavidPeiffer 5y ago
  >Maybe with a video clip of that play. It would probably be profitable. This could be the next NFT! They could sell the rights ahead of time (1st hit attempt for _x_ player), or after the fact. Maybe if you catch the ball you get the rights automatically to incentivize buying tickets to the games.
- TylerE 5y ago
  Doesn't help, because they doctor the ball before they throw it. They already go through on average 80-100 balls per game anyway, which means the average ball only sees 2-3 pitches as it is.
Igelau 5y ago
The pitch doctoring rule is an anachronism. It's a leftover from when they'd use the same ball until it was brown and falling apart. From before stadium lighting. They blamed the spitter for killing a guy who couldn't see it and banned it. Of course, they didn't really ban it. They selectively enforce it. Joe West wants another headline, so he confiscates a dirty hat. And no umpire ever even raised an eyebrow at Mariano Rivera having some kayfabe ball trajectory that no one else does. It's a gatekeeping rule that allows the league to have another hand in who gets in trouble and who gets to excel.
- getlawgdon 5y ago
  What on earth is a "kayfabe ball trajectory"? Closest thing I could imagine is what's these days is called an eephus and which is complete legitimate and which some variant of has been occasionally tossed by pitchers for many decades.
  - xhkkffbf 5y ago
    Kayfabe comes from fake "pro wrestling." It means acknowledging that it's all scripted and puncturing that layer of fiction that it's a real competitive sport.
    - krapp 5y ago
      >It means acknowledging that it's all scripted and puncturing that layer of fiction that it's a real competitive sport. It means exactly the opposite actually... kayfabe is pig-latin for "be fake." It's when you play the part and refuse to admit it's fiction.
- mkovach 5y ago
  Baseball banned the spitball for many reasons, but the main one was to increase home runs (Babe Ruth was proving to be pretty popular.) Another reason given reason, which I only give partial merit to, is because of the Spanish Flu Epidemic in 1918 and the lack of sanitary for the "unsanitary pitch". It was banned in two steps. In 1920, players could assigned up to two pitchers to throw the spitball. After that season, 14 players were grandfathered in and allow to continue throwing a spitball. Burleigh Grimes threw the last legal spitball in 1934. Carl May threw a pitch that killed Ray Chapmen in 1920, which the spitball rules still allowed teams to have spitballers. May was generally a wild pitcher, in fact he had hit Chapman's teammate, and manager, Tris Speaker in the head in 1918. May's claim was Chapman was crowding the plate, He throw a high inside fastball, that his May's teammates claim was a strike, to brush him off the plate. It was an unwritten rule about brush back pitches that lead to Chapman's death. Chapman's death had nothing to do with getting the spitball getting banned. Rivera was the best pitcher I have seen in throwing a cutter. His long fingers let me get unique grip on it. The problem that MLB didn't see was that my providing information about spin rates, pitchers would be able to start experimenting, see results, and adjust.
nickysielicki 5y ago
I want to go to a baseball game with a sign that says, "Legalize foreign substances". Casual viewers like games with lots of hits and lots of runs, and the MLB has gone through a lot of effort to facilitate this (ie: runner starting on second in extras), but as someone who is really into the long-haul aspect of baseball (I like the whole farming and development system, I like the idea that baseball is not fair in terms of cap space, I like that the season is so long with so many games, I like the strategy around managing the bullpen), I really like watching "boring" games where pitchers are just throwing disgusting nasty pitches for 7-8 innings. There is nothing more exciting to me than a no-no. I really don't have any issue with foreign substances -- it's still impressive nonetheless. To me, baseball is the only sport where fandom really makes sense. In basketball, you'll see fans of players moreso than teams -- their fandom will follow ie: LeBron around. And why shouldn't they be mostly fans of players? The coach and management makes little difference. This is opposed to in baseball where when you're a fan of a team, you're also a fan of the management and the owners and the coaches and the little decisions they make over the time-span of weeks (and even years) to get to a winning team. A lot of pieces have to come together, you can't just buy a superstar -- although you're free to try. When one pitcher can throw nasty stuff (not necessarily throwing hard, just throwing precisely) and save his team from using the arm of someone in the pen, it's super exciting to me. If a little bit of pine tar is facilitating that, it's all the same to me.
- reader_mode 5y ago
  I don't know almost anything about baseball (European) an reading your post made me think you're arguing about legalized steroids until that pine tar bit.
  - nickysielicki 5y ago
    Kind of switching subjects here, but I don't have a real problem with steroids either. Society is already fine with the idea that athletes will destroy their bodies as a part of competing at a high level. Plenty of kids around 15-16-17 will have torn their rotator cuff just from pitching in highschool baseball; or given themselves a concussion from a hard hit in football or a header in soccer. Weight lifting, even with proper form, is bad for your joints once you get to a certain point. They take a lot of supplements that aren't really healthy to chase maximum performance. A lot of the time, they're engaging in the same sort of practice that recreational drug users will find themselves in: using drugs that accomplish roughly the same thing before enforcement agencies know to look for it. Arguably, it'd be safer for them to just use well-researched steroids under the supervision of their team doctors. I don't see why supplementing your endocrine system is categorically different than anything else these career athletes do.
thatswrong0 5y ago
Baseball has certainly gotten.. less interesting to watch in recent years, with doctored balls and players optimizing for homeruns (which increases strikeout rates), plus the game takes so dang long for so little action. Foolish Baseball has IMO a great take on a list of things the MLB could do to "fix" baseball, with not blatantly allowing super sticky stuff being one of them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uh_F8WtrDCo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uh_F8WtrDCo (I also like the idea of a shot clock for pitchers) If sticky stuff didn't negatively impact the end product, then I'd say just allow it. But it does, even though I love seeing wiffle ball-esque nastiness, because it results in far fewer balls put in play. I want to see fielders making great catches and throws, crazy bassrunning, and legitimate hustled triples, not _just_ whiffs and homeruns and Shohei Ohtani. So maybe there's a middle ground where they could provide a legal product beyond just a rosin bag that pitchers can use to ensure control without artificially boosting spinrates so significantly, and then continue to collect balls throughout the year and issue harsh suspensions for illegal foreign substances found. I don't blame pitchers for having used it in the current environment, seeing as their paychecks were on the line and EVERYONE else was doing it too because it wasn't being enforced until social media put a spotlight on it (except DeGrom seemingly).
- vmception 5y ago
  Recent years? Haha Do you mean like the last 2 years or something longer than my entire life span
  - thatswrong0 5y ago
    :) should have said "even less interesting" to emphasize my indifference to baseball related content besides Jomboy and Foolish Baseball. And I say this as someone who played baseball through high school.
- diogenescynic 5y ago
  MLB is poorly run. They have lost viewers and stadium attendees, despite other sports growing. The commissioner doesn’t even appear to like the sport and the changes they’ve forced are ridiculous—especially the forced runner in tie games.
causality0 5y ago
There's too much money in sports for anyone in power to give a damn. Cheating doesn't interfere with the cash flow from fans so why should they care? Take something where cheating does interfere with cash flow: academics. Your first incidence of cheating means you fail the course and the second means you get expelled from the school. Imagine if using sticky stuff in baseball, deflating the ball in football, or taking dives in soccer meant the player was suspended for an entire season for the first offense and banned for life for the second offense.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
diogenescynic 5y ago
Baseball is my favorite sport. There’s no clock. The defense controls the ball. There is no body type for positions. The tactics and strategies used and pitcher on hitter matchups are like chess matches and card games. But… the people who own MLB teams and republicans the organization seem to be completely passionless and to not understand their fans. I really what they could do if Manfred was forced out and had a commissioner who actually focused on getting new fans and and expanding teams internationally. Sadly Manfred is allowing this cheating to continue. He didn’t punish the Astros or Red Sox significantly so everyone is cheating now. It really reminds me of society in California that quickly has become somewhat lawless towards property crime.
babesh 5y ago
Steroids then sign stealing using cameras then super sticky baseballs. If you look at other areas of our society, you will see the same evolution in cheating. Look at education and research: college admissions scandal, replication crisis, peer review scandal. Look at tech: Leetcode to get into companies, selecting who gets prized projects, shipping abandonware in order to add them to promotion packets, etc… Media: not reporting news that goes against your narrative, reporting news that you know to be false, adding your narrative to events where there is no connection, etc…
irrational 5y ago
How is this a secret? I don’t follow baseball. I’ve never seen a baseball game. I’ve never talked baseball with anyone. Yet I somehow always knew they did this. How? I think it was an open “secret” that was really common knowledge but is just now being openly discussed.
foxyv 5y ago
Baseball is great, just not major league. Minor league games are so much more entertaining. You have some serious action going on because the pitchers aren't ball cannons and the hitters are banging balls out left and right. The hype is a lot more intense in the small stadiums. Plus you can stream games for $40 a year. https://www.milb.com/live-stream-games https://www.milb.com/live-stream-games MLB looks more like a chess game than a baseball game. Who wants to watch a no-hitter really? I mean it's cool that your team is doing well, but it's just plain horrible to sit through. (At least if you are sober and doing nothing else.) Half the Dodger games I attended, the fans left early to beat the traffic.

144 points by doublerebel 5y ago

User23 5y ago

It’s been out for at least a year when The MVP Machine was published.

abnry 5y ago

I just love Trevor Bauer in all of this.

mastazi 5y ago

There are similar issues in cricket, here in Australia we had a ball tampering scandal in 2018, involving adhesive tape and sandpaper: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Australian_ball-tampering_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Australian_ball-tampering...

tardismechanic 5y ago
Correction: The Australian cricket team was involved in ball tampering but the incident happened in South Africa.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

dang 5y ago

Related from yesterday: Pitch doctoring should be the biggest scandal in sports - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27496095 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27496095 - June 2021 (183 comments)

void_mint 5y ago

Ball tampering has been a thing since baseball's inception. It's nothing new.

cryptoz 5y ago
Sure, tech isn't new either. People have been doing startups and tech forever, it's nothing new. Better not have any discussions about tech since it's old news. Humans have always been innovating.
- void_mint 5y ago
  Right but when people post about a new tech, they don't say "Tech's dirty little secret is out". This post is pretending ball tampering is a secret. What's the secret if it's been a thing forever and has always been public?
  - cryptoz 5y ago
    > Right but when people post about a new tech, they don't say "Tech's dirty little secret is out". Sure they do, in droves: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Tech%27s+dirty+little+secret+is+out%22 https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Tech%27s+dirty+little+sec... > What's the secret if it's been a thing forever and has always been public? I don't think the assumptions in your question are true. I'd wager that a _lot_ more people are talking about ball tampering now than ever before.
    - void_mint 5y ago
      > Sure they do, in droves: And a post about "Tech's Dirty Little Secret" would be appropriately downvoted off the front page of this website. > I don't think the assumptions in your question are true. I'd wager that a _lot_ more people are talking about ball tampering now than ever before. How can it be a secret if "more people are talking about ball tampering than ever before"? Where's the secret?
      - cryptoz 5y ago
        The secret is out. That's the point. Not many people were talking about it before. The "secret". Now a lot of people are talking about it. The secret is now "out". There have been lots of highly-upvoted and heavily-commented "dirty secret is out" posts on HN's front page. I don't want to argue so I'll just leave it at that.

Animats 5y ago

So use a new ball for each pitch. Sell the used balls to fans. Maybe with a video clip of that play. It would probably be profitable.

lbotos 5y ago
It's not on the balls alone, it's on the pitcher's gear. Glove. Hat. Etc. If you watch the clip halfway through the article, you can see a pitcher bent over liberally applying the bullfrog sunscreen to their arms to mix with the rosin.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
DavidPeiffer 5y ago
>Maybe with a video clip of that play. It would probably be profitable. This could be the next NFT! They could sell the rights ahead of time (1st hit attempt for _x_ player), or after the fact. Maybe if you catch the ball you get the rights automatically to incentivize buying tickets to the games.
TylerE 5y ago
Doesn't help, because they doctor the ball before they throw it. They already go through on average 80-100 balls per game anyway, which means the average ball only sees 2-3 pitches as it is.

Igelau 5y ago

The pitch doctoring rule is an anachronism. It's a leftover from when they'd use the same ball until it was brown and falling apart. From before stadium lighting. They blamed the spitter for killing a guy who couldn't see it and banned it. Of course, they didn't really ban it. They selectively enforce it. Joe West wants another headline, so he confiscates a dirty hat. And no umpire ever even raised an eyebrow at Mariano Rivera having some kayfabe ball trajectory that no one else does. It's a gatekeeping rule that allows the league to have another hand in who gets in trouble and who gets to excel.

getlawgdon 5y ago
What on earth is a "kayfabe ball trajectory"? Closest thing I could imagine is what's these days is called an eephus and which is complete legitimate and which some variant of has been occasionally tossed by pitchers for many decades.
- xhkkffbf 5y ago
  Kayfabe comes from fake "pro wrestling." It means acknowledging that it's all scripted and puncturing that layer of fiction that it's a real competitive sport.
  - krapp 5y ago
    >It means acknowledging that it's all scripted and puncturing that layer of fiction that it's a real competitive sport. It means exactly the opposite actually... kayfabe is pig-latin for "be fake." It's when you play the part and refuse to admit it's fiction.
mkovach 5y ago
Baseball banned the spitball for many reasons, but the main one was to increase home runs (Babe Ruth was proving to be pretty popular.) Another reason given reason, which I only give partial merit to, is because of the Spanish Flu Epidemic in 1918 and the lack of sanitary for the "unsanitary pitch". It was banned in two steps. In 1920, players could assigned up to two pitchers to throw the spitball. After that season, 14 players were grandfathered in and allow to continue throwing a spitball. Burleigh Grimes threw the last legal spitball in 1934. Carl May threw a pitch that killed Ray Chapmen in 1920, which the spitball rules still allowed teams to have spitballers. May was generally a wild pitcher, in fact he had hit Chapman's teammate, and manager, Tris Speaker in the head in 1918. May's claim was Chapman was crowding the plate, He throw a high inside fastball, that his May's teammates claim was a strike, to brush him off the plate. It was an unwritten rule about brush back pitches that lead to Chapman's death. Chapman's death had nothing to do with getting the spitball getting banned. Rivera was the best pitcher I have seen in throwing a cutter. His long fingers let me get unique grip on it. The problem that MLB didn't see was that my providing information about spin rates, pitchers would be able to start experimenting, see results, and adjust.

nickysielicki 5y ago

I want to go to a baseball game with a sign that says, "Legalize foreign substances". Casual viewers like games with lots of hits and lots of runs, and the MLB has gone through a lot of effort to facilitate this (ie: runner starting on second in extras), but as someone who is really into the long-haul aspect of baseball (I like the whole farming and development system, I like the idea that baseball is not fair in terms of cap space, I like that the season is so long with so many games, I like the strategy around managing the bullpen), I really like watching "boring" games where pitchers are just throwing disgusting nasty pitches for 7-8 innings. There is nothing more exciting to me than a no-no. I really don't have any issue with foreign substances -- it's still impressive nonetheless. To me, baseball is the only sport where fandom really makes sense. In basketball, you'll see fans of players moreso than teams -- their fandom will follow ie: LeBron around. And why shouldn't they be mostly fans of players? The coach and management makes little difference. This is opposed to in baseball where when you're a fan of a team, you're also a fan of the management and the owners and the coaches and the little decisions they make over the time-span of weeks (and even years) to get to a winning team. A lot of pieces have to come together, you can't just buy a superstar -- although you're free to try. When one pitcher can throw nasty stuff (not necessarily throwing hard, just throwing precisely) and save his team from using the arm of someone in the pen, it's super exciting to me. If a little bit of pine tar is facilitating that, it's all the same to me.

reader_mode 5y ago
I don't know almost anything about baseball (European) an reading your post made me think you're arguing about legalized steroids until that pine tar bit.
- nickysielicki 5y ago
  Kind of switching subjects here, but I don't have a real problem with steroids either. Society is already fine with the idea that athletes will destroy their bodies as a part of competing at a high level. Plenty of kids around 15-16-17 will have torn their rotator cuff just from pitching in highschool baseball; or given themselves a concussion from a hard hit in football or a header in soccer. Weight lifting, even with proper form, is bad for your joints once you get to a certain point. They take a lot of supplements that aren't really healthy to chase maximum performance. A lot of the time, they're engaging in the same sort of practice that recreational drug users will find themselves in: using drugs that accomplish roughly the same thing before enforcement agencies know to look for it. Arguably, it'd be safer for them to just use well-researched steroids under the supervision of their team doctors. I don't see why supplementing your endocrine system is categorically different than anything else these career athletes do.

thatswrong0 5y ago

Baseball has certainly gotten.. less interesting to watch in recent years, with doctored balls and players optimizing for homeruns (which increases strikeout rates), plus the game takes so dang long for so little action. Foolish Baseball has IMO a great take on a list of things the MLB could do to "fix" baseball, with not blatantly allowing super sticky stuff being one of them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uh_F8WtrDCo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uh_F8WtrDCo (I also like the idea of a shot clock for pitchers) If sticky stuff didn't negatively impact the end product, then I'd say just allow it. But it does, even though I love seeing wiffle ball-esque nastiness, because it results in far fewer balls put in play. I want to see fielders making great catches and throws, crazy bassrunning, and legitimate hustled triples, not _just_ whiffs and homeruns and Shohei Ohtani. So maybe there's a middle ground where they could provide a legal product beyond just a rosin bag that pitchers can use to ensure control without artificially boosting spinrates so significantly, and then continue to collect balls throughout the year and issue harsh suspensions for illegal foreign substances found. I don't blame pitchers for having used it in the current environment, seeing as their paychecks were on the line and EVERYONE else was doing it too because it wasn't being enforced until social media put a spotlight on it (except DeGrom seemingly).

vmception 5y ago
Recent years? Haha Do you mean like the last 2 years or something longer than my entire life span
- thatswrong0 5y ago
  :) should have said "even less interesting" to emphasize my indifference to baseball related content besides Jomboy and Foolish Baseball. And I say this as someone who played baseball through high school.
diogenescynic 5y ago
MLB is poorly run. They have lost viewers and stadium attendees, despite other sports growing. The commissioner doesn’t even appear to like the sport and the changes they’ve forced are ridiculous—especially the forced runner in tie games.

causality0 5y ago

There's too much money in sports for anyone in power to give a damn. Cheating doesn't interfere with the cash flow from fans so why should they care? Take something where cheating does interfere with cash flow: academics. Your first incidence of cheating means you fail the course and the second means you get expelled from the school. Imagine if using sticky stuff in baseball, deflating the ball in football, or taking dives in soccer meant the player was suspended for an entire season for the first offense and banned for life for the second offense.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

diogenescynic 5y ago

Baseball is my favorite sport. There’s no clock. The defense controls the ball. There is no body type for positions. The tactics and strategies used and pitcher on hitter matchups are like chess matches and card games. But… the people who own MLB teams and republicans the organization seem to be completely passionless and to not understand their fans. I really what they could do if Manfred was forced out and had a commissioner who actually focused on getting new fans and and expanding teams internationally. Sadly Manfred is allowing this cheating to continue. He didn’t punish the Astros or Red Sox significantly so everyone is cheating now. It really reminds me of society in California that quickly has become somewhat lawless towards property crime.

babesh 5y ago

Steroids then sign stealing using cameras then super sticky baseballs. If you look at other areas of our society, you will see the same evolution in cheating. Look at education and research: college admissions scandal, replication crisis, peer review scandal. Look at tech: Leetcode to get into companies, selecting who gets prized projects, shipping abandonware in order to add them to promotion packets, etc… Media: not reporting news that goes against your narrative, reporting news that you know to be false, adding your narrative to events where there is no connection, etc…

irrational 5y ago

How is this a secret? I don’t follow baseball. I’ve never seen a baseball game. I’ve never talked baseball with anyone. Yet I somehow always knew they did this. How? I think it was an open “secret” that was really common knowledge but is just now being openly discussed.

foxyv 5y ago

Baseball is great, just not major league. Minor league games are so much more entertaining. You have some serious action going on because the pitchers aren't ball cannons and the hitters are banging balls out left and right. The hype is a lot more intense in the small stadiums. Plus you can stream games for $40 a year. https://www.milb.com/live-stream-games https://www.milb.com/live-stream-games MLB looks more like a chess game than a baseball game. Who wants to watch a no-hitter really? I mean it's cool that your team is doing well, but it's just plain horrible to sit through. (At least if you are sober and doing nothing else.) Half the Dodger games I attended, the fans left early to beat the traffic.