It's one thing if it's a guy like Zack Greinke who throws heat and occasionally tosses up a 57-MPH eephus, but we're talking about a position player in a blowout game who you know is most likely throwing lollipops.
Baseball Thread -
- Thread starter HandBanana
- Start date
Supposedly they're going to destroy the foreign substances in the next couple of weeks (the pitcher puts the lotion and pine tar upon the fingers or else he gets the hook). I just dont see that fucking happening midseason.
Last edited:
FaramirG
kiwifarms.net
I think they started doing it in 2019.
I read that it's a 10-game suspension for using "foreign substances", not sure how they're going to enforce it though because basically everyone is doing it. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out. Cole is allegedly one of the biggest offenders (his spin rate increased massively from 2017 to 2019), and some people on twitter are already drawing connections between the new rule announcement and him getting lit up by the Rays the other day. Hope Cashman kept the receipts for that $300 million contract just in case...
Lol I'm an Astros fan (so sorry) and Cole fucking went from a mediocre to above average starter in Pittsburgh to a Cy Young winner over fucking Verlander in a year (the year after we won the chip) with a sick four-seamer. Steinbrenny gave him the bag. Good for those guys. We used that cash to sign Jake Odorizzi for 3/30. Jokes on you, major league baseball.
FaramirG
kiwifarms.net
One of the worst calls I've ever seen*. Bottom of the 9th, 2 outs, tie game, runners on the corners, a full count, and this is a called strike 3.
That was literally a solid 6 inches off the plate. I don't know if this guy had money on the game or what, but that's just unacceptable.
*Not including Angel Hernandez calls
That was literally a solid 6 inches off the plate. I don't know if this guy had money on the game or what, but that's just unacceptable.
*Not including Angel Hernandez calls
Bauer's average spinrate just dropped by 250+ RPMs, I've got a really bad feeling about Cole's next start.
His date must have cancelled on him.
Anyway, if I still cared about baseball, I'd be welcoming our new robot umpire overlords.
Couple of interesting moves from the last 24 hours that I thought were worth noting:
- Yesterday the Phillies outrighted Scott Kingery to AAA. He's the guy that they signed to a six-year extension worth a guaranteed $24 million before he even reached the Majors in 2018. His rookie season was pretty bad, but his 2019 sophomore season was solid. Since then, however, he's been horrendous at the plate.
- Today the Rangers DFA'd Khris Davis after getting him from Oakland this past winter as part of the trade involving Elvis Andrus.
- Also from today, pitcher Riley Pint announced his retirement. He was the 4th overall pick by the Rockies in 2016. He battled lots of injuries and severe control problems before calling it quits. He was pitching in High-A ball with Colorado this year, the highest level that he made it to in his pro career. It should be noted that Colorado's first round pick (27th overall), pitcher Mike Nikorak (drafted one spot ahead of Mike Soroka of the Braves), from 2015 also retired this year in late April due to a couple of major elbow injuries too; he also never made it past A-ball.
CapricornusRex
kiwifarms.net
Snell won the Cy in 2018, Verlander won it in 2019. Garret Cole has never won a Cy Young. It wasn't just Cole who went from mediocre to Cy contender. Charlie Morton did it as well upon arriving in Houston, and Verlander went from a 3.82 ERA in Detroit, to a 1.06 the rest of the year with the Astros in 2017, 2nd in Cy voting in 2018, and winning it in 2019. Just about every pitcher uses something sticky when they pitch.
I forget who said it, but someone said that you can tell who is dirty when they don't lick their fingers. If they're licking their fingers they're probably just using rosin on their fingers, which baseball has been fine with forever. Those who aren't doing that are people like Bauer and Cole. Bauer is so gung ho about it there's video of him during warm ups taking the can of shit he uses out of his shorts pocket and smearing it inside of his glove.
By the way, for those who are unfamiliar, this is how easy you can get a grip without cheating by MLB standards:
And yet teams apparently have chemists on retainer creating sticky shit for their pitchers. So says the Angel's clubhouse guy who got fired for providing "go go juice" to pitchers, including Garret Cole and Justin Verlander.
The Angels clubhouse guy getting fired was terrible, and part of me hopes he sues the league. I've thought about it a bit over the last month or so, and I think MLB just needs to mass produce an acceptable grip substance for all teams, using the same chemists teams are employing. Idk how you necessarily stop pitchers from using their own shit under my idea though.
CapricornusRex
kiwifarms.net
They do. It's called Rosin. They give players a big bag of it on the mound. As Pedro demonstrated, it takes less than 4 minutes to have your fingers tacky and sticking together. Players today want to throw fastballs as hard as they can with the ball practically glued to their fingers for maximum spin. Stars are out with injuries because the pitchers are losing control of their fastballs because of this. Trevor Bauer started using this concoction that was a mix of rosin, pine tar and Coke cooked down in a coke can which seems just way overdoing it, but the players want as much spin as they can get.
Now the league has come down with the hammer and banned ALL sticky substances, including the fucking rosin, and the damn shame of this is that it's the MLBPAs fault. If they weren't a nightmare for the league to work with, the league would have already been in talks with the union to get this shit fixed. Now the players have to suffer while the union scrambles to get their rosin back.
I'm totally willing to be proven wrong, but I'm almost certain the rosin bag is still on the mound. From my understanding, the shit with the spider tack and whatnot started with the major velocity movement in pitching 10-15 years ago. Like you mentioned with injuries, pitchers were just absolutely hurling the ball at 96+ and sometimes it would slip and plunk the hitter. Batters were sick of getting beaned by near triple digit heat, as was the MLB, so the league started looking the other way when it came to foreign substances just to limit HBPs on insane fastballs. Baseball being baseball, analytics stepped in and figured out that you could majorly increase spin rates and movement on pitches by using some combination of sunscreen, pine tar, vagasil, what have you. While all this experimentation and development was going on, MLB was still using the juiced ball, so it wasn't really an issue. Then they unjuiced the ball and now the league is hitting under .240 as a whole and here we are now.
I think Manfred making this change midseason is not only stupid, but frankly dangerous. Changes like this need to be made in the offseason. You could go back to just the rosin bag, but I think an MLB-approved spider tack that a pitcher can keep on his pants or glove or hat wouldn't be the worst thing.
CapricornusRex
kiwifarms.net
Maybe. I dunno. Pedro didn't need it and he was tiny while dominating the roided out Yankees, Orioles, and Indians. Spider tack and substances like that didn't start becoming a big thing until recently with the new cameras that could capture RPMs and pitchers finally understood what all that extra spin will do. Troy Percival brought the "go go juice" formula to the Angels, and the Angels guy was making it and either selling it, or giving it away to any pitchers who wanted it. I am curious when Troy brought it.. when he came to the team from the minors, or did it happen in 2001 because his '99 and '00 season were really mediocre, then he went right back to being old Troy.
I personally feel like pitchers just told hitters they did it so they had better control, but when you watch pitches that hit players these days it's either an errant curve (meh), or it's a violently thrown fastball the pitcher has no control over even with their fingers damn near glued to the ball.
Yeah I think you're onto something with this as far as pitchers bullshitting the safety argument. I don't have a source because I heard it on the radio, but supposedly HBPs are at an all time high this year. It's crazy you mention Percival, and I believe it, but I thought this was a relatively new phenomenon. Fucking baseball man.
I may have been listening to the same thing as you were as I did hear the same thing a few nights ago while I was driving. I can't find anything from 2021, but here's a 2019 article from Fangraphs on the subject (with loads of graphs and charts which I'm too lazy to summarize at such an hour here.) I thought the quote below and the table in the article were of interest:
Highest HBP% Since 1900
| Season | HBP% |
|---|---|
| 1900 | 1.180% |
| 2019 | 1.113% |
| 2018 | 1.038% |
| 2001 | 1.011% |
| 2003 | 0.986% |
| 2004 | 0.981% |
| 1901 | 0.976% |
| 2006 | 0.966% |
| 2005 | 0.965% |
| 2017 | 0.951% |
Now looking at these league stats (which are in the picture below) from Baseball Reference we can see that regarding the number of times that a player gets hit during a game 4 of the top 12 seasons have come from 2018 onward.
As of writing this 1.16% of plate appearances result in a hit batter in 2021, down from 1.23% in the shortened 2020 season. Both seasons were up notably from the last two full MLB seasons: 2019 (1.06%) and 2018 (1.03%). I would theorize that as the season progressed in 2021 we'd see the rate creep up as pitchers break down over the year in addition to more young pitchers being called up. The new rule regarding substances will throw a wrench into knowing for sure what would have happened if things had stayed as they were.
Like you said, HBP should slowly start to creep up to the normal rate given regular season injuries. I'm pretty sure you're on point with that prediction given the large sample and piling up injuries, but I'll play the waiting game. I honestly think they should just juice the fucking balls again.
The Diamondbacks are on their way to their 17th loss in a row. Will they be just plain lousy or historically awful?
If anyone is looking for a game to tune into on Tuesday night, the Rays and Red Sox game should be of interest. Yesterday Tampa announced that they're promoting their 20 year-old infielder and consensus #1 prospect (since the start of last year) in all of baseball, Wander Franco, to the big league club. In 39 games this season with AAA Durham he's hitting .315 with 7 homers, 6 triples and 11 doubles while striking out in just under 12% of his plate appearances.
FaramirG
kiwifarms.net
Umps check Scherzer for "sticky stuff" for the second time in one game, he's not happy about it.
Similar threads
Autistic Baked Alaska hanger-on and Jewish white nationalist meth head wigger with a terminal case of jungle fever who wants everyone to know that just because he had sex with a 13 year-old doesn't mean he's a pedophile.
