Midseason rule changes bush league
Manfred can’t get a grip on competitive balance
Right in the middle of the season, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred decided to change the rules.
The rule change was so significant that you have pitchers and managers offering different comments from team to team.
The first-place Tampa Bay Rays just lost their ace, Tyler Glasnow, who said the rule change, one that no longer allows pitchers to use any substances to improve their grip, directly caused him to hurt his elbow.
“To tell us to do something completely different in the middle of a season is insane,” he told reporters. The Red Sox have felt differently. Pitching coach Dave Bush has made strong public comments endorsing rule changes. Alex Cora seemed to cautiously support it, noting that the league “can back it up with data and information they have.” And on Wednesday, one of the game’s best hitters over the better part of the last decade said firmly he’s in favor of it.
“In the last, I would say, two years the ball has been moving a lot differently than it has in my first eight years in the big leagues,” J.D. Martinez said.
There are two problems with this. The biggest one is that it can severely affect the way the standings shake out over the final 3-1/2 months of the season.
The Red Sox have done surprisingly well. They’ve done so with a bunch of pitchers who were not expected to be very good this year, but have mostly over-performed compared to career averages. Some of those numbers have come down drastically over the last two weeks, since news of MLB’s rule changes were first suggested to team owners.
Now teams have to adjust their strategies, and probably their rosters, in the middle of a season.
The other issue is a midseason change quite clearly pits the hitters directly against the pitchers.
Listen to Martinez, when asked if he was frustrated that he and his team are performing better than expected, but now have to adapt to new rules.
“I don’t think it really affects us,” he said. “I don’t think it affects our pitchers, honestly. Talking with our pitchers, nobody really uses that kind of stuff. Nobody uses those kinds of substances. So I think it’s going to benefit us.”
But several times throughout the interview, Martinez said that “the whole league” is currently using sticky stuff, and that it’s gotten completely out of control.
“I think it was one of those things that it started off with a couple of guys we’re using it and everyone kind of turned their head and looked the other way,” Martinez said. “And then the secret got out. Everyone started using it. And then the league starts … the entire league starts using it.
“Do I blame the pitchers? No, I don’t, because they’re being compared to their peers. And if the other pitchers are using it, they’d be stupid not to use it.”
That the whole league is using it but the Red Sox seems like a contradictory statement.
“By that, I mean a lot of pitchers around the league,” Martinez said. “I’m not trying to say every team out there is doing it. I’ll take that back if that’s how you took it. But a lot more people are using it than aren’t. That’s why I said, like, our guys, they haven’t really — most of them pitch naked. That’s what they call it, by the way, pitching naked, so don’t take that the wrong way. Most guys that do, the guys that pitch normal, everything will be fine. Nothing is going to change for them.
“It’s the other ones who are really dependent on that kind of stuff to have their success. Those are the guys who are kind of exploiting the system and are the ones who are going to get hurt by it. At the same time, you have to look at it from the offensive side, too. There are a lot of guys who are getting called up to face these guys who might not have a major league career because these guys are hurting them, in a sense. What’s hurting one career is hurting another career. Which career is more important? A pitcher or position player?”
So it’s the pitchers vs. the hitters again.
Obviously, Martinez isn’t going to throw his own guys under the bus. But go back and watch some Red Sox games from earlier in the year and you’ll see guys rub their wrist or rub the brim of their hat, then rub the ball.
Like Martinez said, most pitchers in the league do it.
All of a sudden, they can’t. Starting Monday, umpires will routinely be checking. Any offenders will get a 10-day suspension.
And now we’re left to wonder which teams will get better and which will get worse.
Thanks to MLB’s constant manipulation of the game instead of letting it sort itself out, combined with selective ignorance despite knowing it needs to intervene and ignoring problems that benefit the product’s marketability, this is happening right in the middle of the season.