IN SO-CALLED CRACKDOWN, MANFRED ONLY MAKES AN UGLIER MESS
By waiting too long to threaten 10-game suspensions with pay — a mere tap on a goo-lathered wrist — MLB risks wreaking competitive havoc if its new substance ban leads to major pitching injuries
Do the lords of Major League Baseball realize that three elite, Spider Tack-packing pitchers — Gerrit Cole, Trevor Bauer, Max Scherzer — currently have contracts approaching a collective $700 million? I’m sure they do. And the fact no one cared until the other day, when a filthy sport finally acknowledged its latest ethical scandal, is all you need to know about the flimsy punishment moving forward for using any and all sticky substances:
A 10-game suspension WITH pay.
Meaning, a violating staff ace risks losing only one measly start if caught altering balls. Or, he conveniently could be placed on a 10-day injured list and no one ever would know he flouted the so-called new regulations. Typically, a quality starting pitcher gets 32 to 35 assignments during a regular season. Missing one, or two if a manager doesn’t adjust with ‘‘openers’’ or a deep rotation, is a penalty of roughly 2 or 3 percent — a tap on a goo-lathered wrist.
That isn’t a deterrent. It’s an invitation to continue cheating because, hey, baseball wouldn’t be baseball if a lot of squirrelly men — in and out of uniform — weren’t manipulating laws. Had the owners and their puppet commissioner, Rob Manfred, honestly cared about integrity, they would have enforced Rules 3.01 and 6.02(c) all along, and pitchers wouldn’t have been slathering every substance but elephant semen on the balls. The only reason MLB responded is that players, managers and umpires were going public with house secrets as a reason why offenses were sinking to historic lows of impotence. Spin rates, escalated by the illegal goo, have been making hitters miss like never before and reducing games to unwatchable slogs, with too many strikeouts, too few hits and too little action.
‘‘After an extensive process of repeated warnings without effect, gathering information from current and former players and others across the sport, two months of comprehensive data collection, listening to our fans and thoughtful deliberation, I have determined that new enforcement of foreign substances is needed to level the playing field,” Manfred said in a statement.
What took him so long? Oh, I forgot. Manfred is still on a Segway when the rest of the post-pandemic sports world tries to keep up with Lamborghinis. In the process of finally waking up, he also might have wrecked the competitive balance of a 2021 season that might be our last whiff of baseball for a while, as a crippling labor impasse nears. When news circulated last week of the impending MLB ‘‘crackdown,’’ Tampa Bay ace Tyler Glasnow stopped using sunscreen and rosin as grip enhancers, the most acceptable mixture in the foreign substance kit. It required him to adjust pitching grips, and Monday against the White Sox, he felt his arm pop.
Diagnosis: a partially torn elbow ligament and a flexor tendon strain, a sudden roadblock in the Rays’ hopes of returning to the World Series. How many more pitchers, angry about the edict, will make similar claims now? That they were injured while, in essence, trying not to cheat anymore?
‘‘To tell us to do something completely different in the middle of a season is insane. It’s ridiculous. There has to be some give and take here,’’ Glasnow said in an emotional media session. ‘‘Do it in the offseason. Give us a chance to adjust to it. I just threw 80 innings, then you tell me I can't use anything in the middle of the year. I have to change everything I've been doing the entire season. I'm telling you, I truly believe that's why I got hurt.
‘‘I switched my fastball grip and my curveball grip. I had to put my fastball deeper into my hand and grip it way harder. Instead of holding my curveball at the tip of my fingers, I had to dig it deeper into my hand. I'm choking the shit out of all my pitches."
Glasnow spoke of a union meeting where 36 representatives were present. He claimed the hitters didn’t care about sunscreen and rosin. Now, he is at the center of another war game between MLB and the Players Association. ‘‘I'm sitting here, my lifelong dream. I want to go out and win a Cy Young," the 6-7 fireballer stated. ‘‘I want to be an All-Star — and now it's shit on. Now it's over. Now I have to rehab and try to get back in the playoffs. I'm clearly frustrated."
Not that anyone should feel too sorry for the pitchers, who knew they were breaking specific rules. But they’re right about the bad timing: Only Manfred, the worst commissioner of sport’s modern era, would wait until midseason to make a rules adjustment that could have been enacted last offseason or in previous winters. Tweeted Bauer, who has criticized other pitchers for using substances while living a double life as a suspicious Spin King himself: ‘‘They have knowingly swept this under the rug for 4 years. Now they implement a knee jerk reaction to shifting public perception. Hard to hear them talk about `competitive integrity' when they have no integrity to begin with. … To be clear, the memo is fine long term, and it will serve to level the playing field. That is a good thing. But to implement it mid season when for 3 months you've promised players and teams that nothing about your chosen enforcement of the rules would change this year and actively encouraged players to continue playing how that have in the past, that's a lie. There's no integrity in that. So save it with the competitive integrity bullshit.’’
Congratulations, Mr. Commissioner. You’ve further alienated the players as the collective bargaining agreement nears a Dec. 1 expiration. You’ve further irked fans who are sick of a slow, backward sport that can’t be trusted. And you’ve given America one more reason to tune out ballgames.
Learning nothing from the Steroids Era, the lords allowed themselves to be snookered by the players, complicity going along with their latest scheme because ball-doctoring has been part of the game for more than a century. In effect, Manfred and front offices were encouraging pitchers to ignore rules and use whatever they wanted — from Spider Tack (an industrial glue used by weightlifters) to Pelican Grip, pine tar, sunscreen, rosin, simple saliva and anything else that worked. Not until MLB realized, much too late, that these tactics were killing the sport did Manfred assume the appearance of taking action. ‘‘I understand there’s a history of foreign substances being used on the ball,’’ he said, “but what we are seeing today is objectively far different, with much tackier substances being used more frequently than ever before.’’
Don’t fall for his facade. Baseball is only fooling itself, as usual.
‘‘I don’t think it changes much from what’s been in the past there as far as the rulebook, but there’s just been a little bit more noise about it,” said New York Mets manager Luis Rojas, realizing nothing will change, just as hitters kept using performance-enhancing drugs after Congress cracked down.
This is how baseball operates. People routinely cheat, whether it’s a needle in the butt, a finger in the Spider Tack jar or stealing signs via tech and trash-can-banging. Pitchers have used illegal substances beyond basic spitballs for years, yet not since May 2015 has MLB suspended rule-breakers — and Brian Matusz and Will Smith weren’t exactly Cy Young Award candidates. When the ‘‘clampdown’’ begins Monday, umpires will catch a few wrongdoers because Manfred wants to put on a show, attempting to prove he’s in charge as spin rates begin to decline. But I’d be shocked if a prized pitcher was ejected and sent away 10 days — and I’d be gobsmacked if it happened in the postseason.
Remember: If Manfred really wanted to enforce substance rules, he would have done so years ago, just as predecessor Bud Selig would have done so when he admittedly first heard about steroids in the mid-1990s. Manfred knew all about Brian ‘‘Bubba’’ Harkins, who, as visiting clubhouse attendant for the Los Angeles Angels, provided his home-cooked muck to eagerly inquiring pitchers throughout the majors — including marquee names such as Cole, Scherzer and Justin Verlander, all trying to beat the Angels, by the way. MLB scapegoated and fired Harkins last year, but as Sports Illustrated detailed this week, he’s hardly the only Goo God out there. All of which smacks of the Steroids Era — except back then, America actually cared about baseball. Now, worn down by repeated scandals, fans just shrug disgustedly. As Rojas said, Manfred is reacting only to the outside negativity, not the pounding of his professional conscience.
It would be nice, and also naive, to think pitchers will treat the ban threat with maturity and respect. Without integrity, baseball is pro wrestling, and the sport can’t afford another trampling of trust. Boston manager Alex Cora, who served a one-year suspension for his role in the Houston Astros’ sign-stealing scandal, reminded Red Sox players of the public embarrassment.
‘‘I come from a suspension and I know how embarrassing that is and how tough that is not only on you as a person, but your family and your friends and the people that you love," Cora said. ‘‘Ten games a year, two years, three years, it doesn't matter. Being suspended is hell and you don't want to go through that. I was very open to (the team) and hopefully they understand."
The players will get it, for a few weeks. Then, America will shift its sporting attention to the NBA Finals, the Tokyo Olympics, the Aaron Rodgers drama, college football and the NFL regular season, providing ample opportunity for pitchers to load up on the Spider Tack in time for October’s postseason.
This time, only fools will be watching.
Jay Mariotti, called ‘‘the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes sports columns for Substack and a Wednesday media column for Barrett Sports Media while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts in production today. He’s an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and radio talk host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects. Compensation for this column is donated to the Chicago Sun-Times Charity Trust.