Richards has some good points
Crackdown hits teams by surprise
Baseball is always evolving. This is nothing new.
But Garrett Richards, Tyler Glasnow and a handful of other MLB pitchers who have spoken out against new rules have some good points.
This whole thing is a circus.
Smack dab in the middle of the season, with some teams already committed to paying $200-million plus to a roster full of players they chose to compete under a specific set of rules, the game is being manipulated by the powers at be. Eliminating the use of substances on the mound might sound like a subtle change, but it should have a substantial impact.
Imagine if, at Week 8 in the NFL season, Roger Goodell thought there were too many passing touchdowns and instituted a rule that would severely alter the game to benefit teams that keep the ball on the ground.
So much for the passing-heavy offenses that had been carefully crafted and tinkered with during summer camp and the first three months of the season. Goodbye to the $30-million plus that teams were paying toptier quarterbacks, whose new purpose would be to hand the ball off, Jimmy Garoppolo-style.
Sorry, but it’s not cheating if everyone is doing it.
And while every pitcher in the game isn’t using some kind of grip enhancer, you can bet that many of them are. Notable players like J.D. Martinez and Trevor Bauer admitted that already. They have no problem with it; if the rules aren’t enforced, every pitcher should be able to use something.
All of a sudden, they can’t. Richards sounded like a man doing his own eulogy on Wednesday night, when he said he was simply grateful to have had an 11-year career before the rules changed. He’s right when he said this will severely alter careers. It might actually end a few.
There seems to be a growing chorus of people who believe the pitchers should shut up, stop complaining and play by the rules. It sounds good in theory: bring the game back to the way it was played in the schoolyard. No more “cheating.”
While we’re at it, why not switch to metal bats, allow players to re-enter the game and use an active roster of 14 guys who can pitch and hit and play five positions?
Not that simple folks. This isn’t schoolyard baseball, this is Major League Baseball. And when MLB teams are being sold for billions of dollars, there are going to be scientists and data analysts being paid good chunks of that money to figure out how to get an advantage.
It’s a copycat league, and once one team is successful doing something, another team does it too. It happens every year.
It’s not just one team, or one player, who is taking advantage of sticky substances to spin the baseball with more force. It’s most of them, and you can be sure of that by the players’ comments and the data behind them. Pitchers are spinning the ball better than ever before, and the hitters don’t like it. The league-wide ERA this year is 4.11, the lowest it’s been since 2015.
But go back to the late-2000s and ERAs were in the mid-4.00s again. In the early-2000s, they were in the high-4.00s.
MLB’s response wasn’t to suddenly ban any performance enhancing drugs in the middle of June. Instead, they put detailed thought into it, planned out a system that would give players one year to stop using substances and give the league one year to test out the results.
Only then did MLB change the rules. Only then did offense come back down.
The weird part is that MLB shouldn’t have any incentive to change the game right now. TV ratings are on the mend. ESPN just released its data from Sunday Night Baseball, which is seeing its largest audience in at least three years. Ratings are up 31% from last year and up 7% from this point in 2019.
People are watching. And with the game creating more highlight-reel moments and bat-flipping homers, young folks seem to be enjoying the way baseball is being played.
If there’s a problem that needs to be addressed, do it in the offseason and let teams and players prepare.
If the rosin bag is truly outdated and no longer needed, like Richards said on Wednesday, study it, research it and update it in the offseason.
Do baseball fans want to sit here and listen to guys like Richards share their sobering thoughts and feelings about life without sticky substances?
Of course not.
And frankly, it’s going to take an adjustment from watching cleanly pitched ball games the last few years to watching the mess we’ve seen in Atlanta the last two nights, where the Red Sox and Braves scored 36 runs, launched seven home runs and saw their pitchers’ spin rates drop hundreds of revolutions per minute.
Let’s hold off on blaming the pitchers for being honest about what’s happening.
Even if you think all sticky stuff should be eliminated from the game, it’s questionable to do it midseason. It is going to take an adjustment. And guys are going to get hurt, as Glasnow did.
There will be fallout, and fans are going to hear about it. That’s just the way it goes.