San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
STRAHM IRKED BY PITCHERS ‘CHEATING’
Padre says MLB right to crack down on altered baseballs
Matt Strahm collects baseball cards, loves to talk strategy and generally appreciates the game he has played his entire life.
The beauty and purity of baseball is so important to him that he is not above going around and letting teammates know they are “cheaters.” He and others say he has done so multiple times.
Strahm, a left-hander in the Padres bullpen, said he is one of what he estimates is no more than a quarter of pitchers in the major leagues who do not alter baseballs using a substance such as pine tar in order to improve grip and/or increase spin.
“It’s cheating,” Strahm said recently. “… There’s plenty of guys in here doing it, and it pisses me off. … I’ll become the best fastball-up-inthe-zone guy in the big leagues if you let me stick my fingers in there, but it’s cheating. I have morals.”
For many in baseball, pitchers using pine tar or mixture of sunscreen and rosin to improve their grip on what seems to be increasingly slippery baseballs falls into the game’s nebulous category of acceptable skirting of the
“There’s plenty of guys in here doing it, and it pisses me off.” Matt Strahm • On pitchers altering baseballs
rules.
“There’s kind of an understanding throughout the league that guys do it,” Padres first baseman Eric Hosmer said.
Is it cheating?
“I don’t know,” Hosmer said before a lengthy pause. “The rules says you can’t do it. So yeah.”
Still, Hosmer said he isn’t particularly bothered by the practice, especially in places like mile-high Coors Field, where the low humidity makes the balls slippery, or on cold nights, which have a similar effect.
“We’re talking about the best in the world no matter what’s on the ball,” Hosmer said.
Several Padres estimated that more than half (and perhaps as much as Strahm’s figure of 75 percent) of major league pitchers alter the baseball with some sort of substance that is technically illegal.
“I don’t care at all, really,” said relief pitcher Craig Stammen. “Everybody has to decide how they want to go about their business and whether they feel they’re cheating or not. For me, I don’t want to have that if, and or but, so I decided not to. … You could argue it’s not cheating, because many players have done this from the beginning of baseball and it’s kind of widely accepted. I don’t care. I just choose not to do it.”
Major League Baseball evidently has started to care, as it informed teams recently that umpires will be more diligent this season enforcing rules prohibiting the altering of baseballs.
Specifically, clubs were reminded of the prohibitions in Rules 3.02 and 6.02 of the Official Playing Rules.
Rule 3.02 says, “No player shall intentionally discolor or damage the ball by rubbing it with soil, rosin, paraffin, licorice, sand-paper, emery-paper or other foreign substance.” The penalty is outlined as ejection from the game and automatic 10-game suspension. Rule 6.02 prohibits using any substance or object to alter a ball or even possessing a substance or object on the mound. The penalty for a violation is also ejection and suspension.
The Angels on Thursday fired longtime visiting clubhouse manager Brian Harkins for supplying visiting pitchers with a substance called Go Go Juice they could apply to baseballs to improve their grip.
Padres pitchers were mostly unaware of MLB’S intent
to crack down on the use of foreign substances on balls. Pitching coach Larry Rothschild said he intended to speak with his pitchers shortly about the new vigilance.
While some pitchers around baseball have predicted a spike in hit batters, especially in cold temperatures, Stammen was among those who said he didn’t think there will be much change in the game even if umpires’ policing greatly reduces the practice. He believes a lot of the benefits are in pitchers’ heads.
Said Hosmer: “The whole control thing, I think that’s a bunch of crap.”
Strahm’s main problem with the doctoring of baseballs is the effect on spin, which can alter a ball’s movement.
“Hitters think, ‘We’d rather do this because everyone is throwing hard and this (helps) to control (the ball),’ ” Strahm said. “But what they don’t understand is the vertical-induced break it creates. When people say a guy’s fastball rises, it’s because it’s sticking to his fingers and he’s spinning the (expletive) out of it and it’s going up. But I can do that naturally. I do it. That’s my natural gift and my natural ability, and people are tainting it.
“They should put it in the rules if they’re going to allow it. Why make the game dirty? It’s literally the game of how to get away with things. How about mano a mano? The best of the best versus the best of the best, level playing field; why can’t that be the thing?”
Strahm believes it should be “the absolute easiest thing” for umpires to catch offenders.
“It’s pretty obvious when you watch guys repeatedly go to the same spot (on their body or uniform) for stuff,” he said. “An umpire just has to watch. Managers don’t say stuff, because their player is doing it. So if MLB is going to crack down, it comes down to the umpire.”
Catcher Austin Hedges, who works with pitchers and faces them, said he didn’t care one way or the other because he isn’t convinced of any science showing using foreign substances helps pitchers all that much.
“These guys are already nasty enough,” Hedges said.
Further, he subscribes to the principle that those who skirt the rules always find a way to stay a step ahead of those who enforce them.
“It’s not going to change the game,” Hedges said. “It’s going to lead to more sketchy things.”