PEDs, banned substances and suspensions 2018

I love baseball, it's shit to watch, I'm watching it collapse now.

better enjoy it now because it's *really* going to collapse in december

y'all

come on. when i'm saying kip, maybe it is collapsing

does the belief in collapse correlate with how your favorite teams are doing?

This could be a bigger deal than steroids because there is actual evidence that can be correlated to performance.

So much talk about home runs and steroids ... but all the top HR years, league wide, have been "post"-steroids. Maybe they'll get rid of the sticky stuff, K rates will keep rising anyway, and we can downplay this scandal in a few years.

i don't know, it doesn't seem as scandalous as steroids to me, because pitchers have always fucked with the ball (i know players have also always used drugs to enhance performance but steroids seem like a step above amphetamines). it's part of the game. i do think they should probably start enforcing the rules against putting stuff on the ball more, but pitchers will still figure out a way to gunk up the ball or scuff it and that's OK. it's fun.

basically i think they need to clarify and enforce the rules better but i don't think players need to be penalized or stats asterisked or anything like that.

gunking the ball to essentially get a knuckler for free is one thing. but increasing grip to get a faster fastball or a harder slider feels more wrong

I thought this was an interesting article from a month ago:

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/fastballs-keep-pouring-into-the-top-of-the-zone/

It diagnoses the symptoms (fastballs with spin at top of the zone), but doesn't mention the potential cause (goop).

Also interesting about deGrom (NB, from a Mets fan):

https://www.reddit.com/r/baseball/comments/ntqy69/comparing_degroms_spin_rate_to_his_peers/

Gaylord Perry, Whitey Ford, and Joe Neikro very much enjoying all this.

Sheehan:

That drop in offense, with constant references to 1968 and its .237 batting average, has been one of the biggest stories of the year. Despite the evidence, MLB is unwilling to concede that the baseball is the reason for this, and has instead capitalized on the grip enhancement story as a means of misdirection. It is shifting the blame for the drop in offense to pitchers and their use of grip enhancers, deciding in the middle of the season to aggressively and publicly police a practice it had largely ignored for years. The league would rather push the story that baseball players are cheaters than address the root cause of the drop in offense -- MLB's own changes to the baseball.

So, no, you can’t just say “Spider Tack bad, pitchers bad.” Rule 6.02(c)(4) should be enforced. It shouldn’t be deployed as a weapon of distraction to win a public-relations battle.

It’s the trashing of the players that bothers me most. As part of this crackdown, MLB plans to have the umpires do random checks of pitchers on the field. Buster Olney reported that this could happen eight to ten times a game. That’s 800 to a thousand times a week that MLB will publicly frisk its players, telling everyone in attendance that baseball players are bad guys who need to be monitored carefully.

Baseball has spent my entire life trashing the players who make the game what it is. Whether calling them greedy or selfish or disloyal or druggies or cheaters, the league has spent 50 years telling baseball fans that it’s the players who are the problem, the ones standing between what the game is and what it could be. MLB is once again tearing down the players to protect itself.

yeah, it's convenient that this is happening during the CBA year

i disagree that it's just the ball though... the ball is still extremely juiced compared to the pre-juice years, pitcher performance and usage definitely plays a huge part in current K rates being what they are, along with the strike zone getting bigger

Is there a sport for which die hards are predicting the collapse of as often as baseball?

In 50 years there will be great baseball and we will be complaining about the state of it all.

Sure there are some problems (mainly due to despicable owners) but 'collapse' seems to be classic social media hyperbole. Just watch Fernando Tatis Jr games.

Donaldson and Cole face each other tonight:

https://nypost.com/2021/06/09/josh-donaldson-doesnt-regret-calling-out-gerrit-cole/

sheehan is a hard case but he's also usually right

and there is absolutely nothing off-limits to manfred/ownership in this coming labor battle. the owners are all insanely rich and do not care about killing the golden goose because on principle they will accept nothing less than obeisance, no matter the short-term losses

I’m sure comes december thing will get ugly, but I’ve seen hockey survive and even thrive after the lost season, and I think baseball will be no different.

Baseball will always have a complex about dying because of football’s ratings and luck in capturing 24/7/365 coverage in sports media.

It took them 50 years to turn the draft into an event (sort of) and they still limit the drama by not making every pick traceable.

Do you mean tradeable?

Yes, autocorrect strikes again.

People lament the death of baseball like they lament the death of french cuisine: every decade for the last 100 years.

The memo outlining the plan for foreign substances is coming tomorrow, sources tell ESPN, and it includes a 10-day suspension with pay for anyone caught with any sort of substance, from sunscreen mixed with rosin to Spider Tack. News story is free at ESPN: https://t.co/9rsIVnRhTK

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) June 15, 2021

this is pretty interesting

https://www.thescore.com/mlb/news/2180019

i guess i don't really doubt that any of this stuff is true but i wish it was being delivered by someone who was less of a clown about it

Everything that I am about to say was verified by more than one player. I do not mean to burn anyone, and I love baseball... I've just had enough of this bullshit.

— Ryan M. Spaeder (@theaceofspaeder) June 16, 2021

lol

I deeply regret everything that I said — it has turned my life upside down. It was a mistake, and I should not have reported on unfounded allegations. I sincerely apologize to all of those impacted — it should not have happened, and it will not happen again. Stick to stats.

— Ryan M. Spaeder (@theaceofspaeder) June 17, 2021

Umpires all over Max Scherzer tonight, even during the inning.

Bro leave Max Scherzer alone do you wanna die? pic.twitter.com/IAWgpHTPQj

— Eric Hubbs (@BarstoolHubbs) June 23, 2021

What did ace of spaeder say? I think i missed that.

Max Scherzer and Joe Girardi had a heated exchange after the 5th inning pic.twitter.com/JQIaA6ccna

— OPT (@OnePursuitTakes) June 23, 2021

pic.twitter.com/taoc2790V0

— Andrew Perpetua (@AndrewPerpetua) June 23, 2021

poly: https://www.crawfishboxes.com/platform/amp/2021/6/17/22538979/ryan-spaeders-statements-on-sign-stealing

ty

lol erik kratz

out of context (not reading the thread title, onethread) watching the umpire walk up to scherzer while he removed his belt - i thought he was about to take a piss in front of his mound in protest of something, and wow, that was compelling!

Saw a tweet (or was it a comment here?) saying something to the effect of "how long until someone strips in protest"

Well

Oakland A’s reliever Sergio Romo was checked for “sticky stuff” and might have upstaged Max Scherzer in the process. pic.twitter.com/wL1jqt4CgE

— Chris Halicke (@ChrisHalicke) June 23, 2021

Oh maybe I was just misremembering karlvs post, uh, one post up

I'm very tired guys

they're so desperate to feel persecuted!

I would not called them persecuted, however for the sake of a lot of things excluding the pitchers, it shouldn’t happen during an inning.

it looks weird. umpires shouldn't be out there patting down pitchers in the middle of the field. that's just not their job.

it’s really dumb. I’m guessing they’ll stop doing it in a couple of weeks.

Since the enforcement memo dropped:
* 63 pitchers (17%) have dropped 2+ standard deviations (spider tack level, 230+ RPM)
* 145 pitchers (38%) have dropped 1+ SD
* 230+ pitchers (60+%) have dropped enough to call the drop ‘statistically significant’ via @choice_fielder

— Eno Sarris (@enosarris) June 29, 2021

Cardinals pitching has certainly sucked big time since then. Maybe fans of most teams feel that way, I don’t know.

am i the only one that thinks it’s majorly fuckin weird that they’re coming down like a mountain on sunscreen but a literal ROSIN BAG is standard equipment on every major league mound? maybe make the rosin a wee bit stickier? or use tacky baseballs like in japan? surely fine control is a good thing?? and then move the rubber back a foot

i think it's totally reasonable that they come down on spider tack, but they have no good way of drawing the line between that and, say, sunscreen. but doing it in the middle of the season is a joke, and these post-inning inspections look ridiculous.

feel like this is another unintended consequence of statcast -- pitchers have always been able to do things with nicks or spit or whatever, but until like five years ago i don't think many people specifically correlated RPM with movement. and no matter what whitey ford and gaylord perry were using, they were still only throwing 85 -- today the stuff gives pitchers unearned command at 98. if pitchers were *really* worried about losing control and beaning someone, they could always ease off the gas . . . but no one wants to do that!

another unintended consequence: what if gerrit cole is merely an above-average pitcher without the stuff? the yankees still owe him $250m. as with robot umps making pitch-framing obsolete, suddenly a whole bunch of players have to be revalued on the fly

totally

i just don't understand why TREE ROSIN is not sticky enough for what pitchers want to do but i guess it's not