Doctoring baseballs with foreign substances to increase spin
and movement has been around for as long as baseball has been played. To try to
combat the practice, Major League Baseball (MLB) is going high tech for the
2021 season, adding spin rate analysis to its arsenal of methods for detecting
changes and enforcing existing policies.
اضافة اعلان
In a memo distributed to teams Tuesday, Michael Hill, a
senior vice president for baseball operations, detailed the enhanced monitoring
process. There will be increased scrutiny of club spaces, inspection and
documentation of balls taken out of play and, in the biggest change from
previous methods, the league will use Statcast data to compare spin rates for
players who are suspected of doctoring balls, checking to see if the numbers
for the game in question differ significantly from their career norms.
Umpire enforcement on the field will stay consistent with
past practices, according to Hill’s memo. “The foregoing enhanced monitoring
measures, however, will provide the commissioner’s office with a separate
evidentiary basis to support a finding that a player has violated the foreign
substance rules,” he said.
The spitball and other so-called freak deliveries were
banned from the sport in 1920, with pitchers initially given one year to adjust
to the change before the rule was adjusted to allow “registered” spitball
pitchers to finish their careers without changing. But foreign substances like
spit, petroleum jelly, pine tar, rosin and sunscreen lotion continued to be used
regardless of rules, and enforcement has been spotty at best.
In perhaps the most extreme example of baseball’s indulgence
of the act, Gaylord Perry, a star right-hander, was so synonymous with the
doctoring of balls that his 1974 autobiography was called “Me and the Spitter.”
The confession did not derail him, as he continued to pitch until 1983, won 314
games and was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1991.
MLB has recognized the need to improve the grip on baseballs
in recent years, and has studied how a stickier ball would perform. With the
adjusted policy in place, the league hopes to have better data, while also
letting players know that it is monitoring the situation.
The topic of doctoring baseballs came to the forefront this
offseason when a former visiting clubhouse manager for the Los Angeles Angels
who had been fired by the team filed a lawsuit in which he claimed to have
helped Gerrit Cole of the New York Yankees, Justin Verlander of the Houston
Astros and several other pitchers obtain ball-gripping substances. The suit, in
which the clubhouse manager claimed to have text messages from Cole asking for
a substance to use on baseballs, was eventually dismissed by a federal judge.
“It’s an ongoing legal issue, and I am not comfortable
talking about it now,” Cole told reporters shortly before the case was
dismissed.
The memo from MLB, which came after teams for years had been
expected to police the situation themselves, gives specific guidance on club
employees’ responsibilities in regard to ball-doctoring substances. It says
fines and suspensions could apply to activities including, but not limited to,
handling foreign substances, advising a pitcher how to use or otherwise mask
the use of foreign substances, interfering with the collection of game-used
baseballs and failing to report observed violations of these rules by players
or staff.
It also said that club leadership could be held accountable
for the actions of staff members.
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