PEDs, banned substances and suspensions 2018

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