Explaining Baseball's Sticky Substance Controversy

I don’t know how many times I watched the clip Tuesday night, but I was practically in tears each time the 16 seconds of madness replayed on my Twitter timeline.

There was Max Scherzer, the future Hall of Famer pitcher for the Nationals, tossing his glove and hat onto the grass, removing his belt in and almost pulling down his pants in complete exasperation at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, earning the ire of the umpires who didn’t appreciate his attitude while they were just trying to do a new requirement of the job. At the behest of Phillies manager Joe Girardi, the umps stopped the game and descended on Scherzer to check and see, for a second time, if Mad Max, a three-time Cy Young Award winner, had any foreign substances on him.

The brilliant and hilarious writers of “Major League”—the best baseball movie of all time—never could’ve dreamed up something so absurd, but welcome to baseball in 2021 where sticky substances have officially replaced steroids as the most rotten S word in the sport’s lexicon. A close second, or third, depending on your personal rankings, would be strikeouts. And because those have skyrocketed to epic levels this season, meaning there’s less action during a baseball game than ever before and they are achingly longer and longer in a world where attention spans are shorter than ever, baseball has a big problem on its hands. Literally.

How should MLB weed out these illegal substances—that help pitchers increase the spin rate of their fastballs and breaking balls to make them incredibly hard to hit—in an orderly and respectful fashion so offenses—that are struggling at an alarming rate—can add a little life to games that are dragging? After a mandate was officially implemented this past Monday, how MLB has addressed it might best be described as ridiculous. But baseball has always excelled at embarrassing itself in ways other leagues marvel at.

While we know baseball isn’t the most popular sport in our neck of the woods, what’s going on with MLB is noteworthy and practically unprecedented. It would be akin to NFL referees checking Tom Brady, and other quarterbacks, for needles every few series if there was a serious ball-deflating scandal. So if you’ve been wondering why pitchers are all of a sudden getting searched TSA style we’ll do our best to make this explainer only slightly less boring than watching two teams combine to strike out 25 times over nine innings.

I’ll spare you an agonizing spiel about how we arrived at this point from the very first baseball game played in New Jersey in 1846. While the business of baseball is relatively healthy—despite the fact it’s probably headed for a nasty labor dispute this winter—MLB is forever trying to remain popular and attract young fans. But as the game has morphed over the decades from one of constant, crisp action to an all or nothing proposition for hitters and pitchers—the concept of the three true outcomes of a walk, strikeout, or home run each at-bat—has arguably hurt baseball’s appeal to sports fans who want things to keep moving. Games that used to take two-and-a-half hours now regularly take three-and-a-half-to-four hours to complete and that’s a problem.

As hitters have prioritized hitting home runs, for monetary reasons as well as strategic ones, pitchers have prioritized throwing harder to negate that power and also rake in tons of money. Miss bats and you’ll get paid. Often handsomely. But that isn’t the best look for the sport since offense will forever excite the masses.

While pitchers have always low-key used substances like pine tar and combinations of sunscreen and rosin and sweat to help grip the baseball—that pitchers claim is incredibly slick and chalky even after MLB rubs every pearl with special Delaware River mud before they’re used (seriously)—they’ve upped their game recently. Hitters are fed up.

“It’s really serious, man,” Padres star Fernando Tatis Jr. told us earlier this month. “If it’s illegal it shouldn’t be out there.” 

Things like Spider Tack and other extremely sticky substances allow pitchers to gain a better grip on the ball and manipulate it in order to increase the revolutions per minute of each pitch thrown. The higher the RPMs, the more movement. The more movement in the strike zone, the harder it is to hit. When hitters overwhelmingly prioritize power over contact and swing at balls increasingly hard to hit you get why strikeouts have skyrocketed.

It’s great for pitchers looking to get massive contracts. But it’s bad for everyone else. The rate of strikeouts is at a record pace—and will probably be broken for a 15^th straight season. The average length of a game is currently 3:09, the second slowest in MLB history. On average we have to wait almost 25 seconds for the next pitch to be thrown. Hitters put the ball in play on a measly 15.8 percent of the pitches they see. Worse, Sports Illustrated’s Tom Verducci wrote this past March that it takes on average nearly four minutes of real time for a baseball to be put into play. That ain’t good for business.

Technically, using pine tar and other “natural” substances to help grip the ball on the mound is against the rules. Yankees slugger Aaron Judge estimated recently that 95 percent of pitchers are using something out there. Former Yankees ace CC Sabathia told us this week he agrees with Judge. But cheating, the kind that isn’t blatant or excessive or offensive, has always been part of the fabric of the sport. It’s just gotten ridiculous over recent years when pitchers—including some extremely notable names—have allegedly been habitual users of super sticky substances that go way beyond what the legends of the sport had access to. Spider Tack, for instance, is a super-sticky paste created for strongman competitors that became a popular option among pitchers. That doesn’t belong in the sport.

As of June 21, commissioner Rob Manfred declared that pitchers would be ejected and suspended if they are found to be using something to help grip the ball on the mound. Umpires will be conducting random searches between innings or between batters or at the order of an opposing manager, as happened with Scherzer on Tuesday. It’s led to comical episodes of frustrated hurlers animatedly disrobing on the field and making a mockery of Manfred’s mandate. They obviously hate it.

“This is not the answer,” Scherzer said following his last start. “I feel like there’s a minority group of players here that have made it public about how they feel about pitchers and how they’re going about it. And I completely understand that there’s a problem with Spider Tack in the game. And we got to get rid of that. But I also think there’s a way to handle this in a better way.”

One even blamed the new crackdown on a serious injury. Tampa Bay Rays star right-hander Tyler Glasnow, who says he had only used sunscreen to previously help with his grip, tore the UCL in his elbow during his last start on June 14 after he was unable to use any kind of sticky substance.

“I switched my fastball grip and my curveball grip,” a heated Glasnow told reporters. “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.”