Gerrit Cole, the New York Yankees’ ace and owner of the biggest contract for a pitcher in baseball history, paused for an extremely awkward five seconds Tuesday and didn’t answer a yes-or-no question about whether he had ever used a foreign substance.
By not denying that he had dabbled in Spider Tack, the viscous grip agent that has become the substance du jour for those looking to improve the spin they create on pitches, Cole validated the concerns that have increasingly dominated conversations around the sport in recent months.
After gathering evidence over the first two months of the season, MLB will arm umpires with information on the likeliest users, then ask them to add another responsibility to their jobs: goo cop.
Cole is an easy target because of his success and salary, yes, but his precipitous spin-rate growth — his average four-seam fastball spin jumped from 2,164 rpm to 2,379 to 2,530 over the 2017-19 seasons — put him on the league’s radar long before the cat got his tongue.
Here’s the reality: MLB has treated foreign substances like Bunny Colvin treated drugs in “The Wire.” And now, like with Hamsterdam, the cops are primed to descend and break up what for so long the establishment enabled.
Further, there is a very good argument to be made that the decline of offense in baseball — which has reached a point of alarm — stems at least in part from the use of foreign substances.
Generally speaking, the tackier the substance, the more friction is created, and the more friction there is, the more a ball spins.
It’s actually just falling less, but the emergence of the high four-seamer as a weapon is inextricably linked to a better understanding of spin.
Pretty explicit! While baseball’s founders could not have foreseen a scenario in which pitchers used increasingly sticky substances to leverage a growing knowledge of how to pitch effectively, the game’s keepers do have the ability to amend their rules.
While in the 18-foot circle surrounding the pitcher’s plate, touch the ball after touching his mouth or lips, or touch his mouth or lips while he is in contact with the pitcher’s plate.
The rules, though, say no licking, no spitting and, technically, no rubbing the ball on, well, anything aside from two bare, dry hands.
An item used to make a baseball move in an unnatural way.
Vaseline, K-Y Jelly and other slippery products made famous by Gaylord Perry, who threw more than 5,000 innings before he was suspended for use of a foreign substance.
Abrasives that scuff balls.
With some resorting to homemade concoctions that include everything from a melted-down Manny Mota Grip Stick to Coca-Cola, modern baseball players can moonlight as quite the odd couple: a lab rat and chemist.
Among its measurements: spin rate, or the revolutions per minute a ball is spinning when it leaves the hand of a pitcher.
By 2013, the teams that weren’t intimidated by new concepts understood simple truths, like the difference between a 2,200 rpm and 2,400 rpm fastball is massive.
Pitchers educated in spin, like Trevor Bauer — much more on him later — for years already had been trying to learn how to goose more spin while also using high-speed cameras to understand what different grips, pressures and general experimentation did to a pitch’s movement characteristics.
Others soon were converts, and they learned the sad part about spin for all but outliers: It’s very difficult to be elite by natural means.
In hindsight, of course that knowledge — and the increasingly universal emphasis on spin rate, which was everywhere from MLB.com to free-agent conversations — should’ve alerted the league that foreign substances were about to become a real problem.
Two pitchers who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the extra tack gives them the faith to throw their sliders at max effort with the intention of generating the most spin — something they weren’t comfortable doing without foreign substances.
The consequence: The leaguewide batting average is currently .237, 17 points lower than in 2015 and the lowest since 1968, after which the mound was lowered from 15 inches to its current 10 because pitchers were seen as too dominant.
Where does his hand go? Does it touch the brim of his cap? If so, there’s probably a foreign substance on it.
If there’s a pitcher who seems to tuck in his shirt a little too often, the foreign substance could reside in his waistband.
On the low end, at least half of pitchers in baseball use at least the low-fi sticky stuff — pine tar or a sunscreen-and-rosin concoction.
And sources around the game believe the number of those who graduated to the premium stuff has increased significantly this season, even as MLB started its evidence-gathering process in April.
In March 2020, the Los Angeles Angels fired a longtime clubhouse attendant, Brian “Bubba” Harkins, after MLB accused him of supplying his homemade grip enhancer to pitchers.
Harkins sued the Angels for defamation, and in his complaint he named more than a dozen players he told MLB had asked him for his blend of pine tar and rosin, including Cole.
Well, in September 2019, something happened: His fastball spin rate, which had hovered at levels consistent with his velocity for almost five years, spiked significantly.
Right there with him: Cole, who went from an average of 2,561 to 2,436 — the lowest average he has had in a game in three years.
Managers — who have the ability to ask an umpire to check an opponent for foreign-substance use — didn’t call out blatant cases.
The awful offense, the incredible movement they see on pitches, the sense that a growing number of pitchers have graduated from sunscreen and rosin to the hard stuff — every-day players are mad.
Others worry it has gotten out of control and want someone at the league to regulate within reason — say, a dispensation for sunscreen and rosin but a suspension for Spider Tack.
Even if everyone is doing it, even if the league isn’t disciplining, that doesn’t invalidate the fact that there is a rule to promote fair competition and large quantities of Major League Baseball players are breaking it.
It laughs at Craig Kimbrel’s cap, which annually features a large, discolored circle on the brim.
Perhaps no one put it better than Eddie Harris, the old junkballer in “Major League,” who, after a soliloquy about the various foreign substances on his body and his willingness to load a ball with snot, told hard-throwing rookie Ricky Vaughn: “I haven’t got an arm like you, kid.
That’s not clear yet.
It took a story detailing the scheme to mobilize the league, and even then, the players who benefited from it were granted immunity and didn’t miss a day of play or a dollar of pay.
For years, MLB has been told by individuals that there is widespread use of foreign substances, and that such use is skewing the game.
Honestly, if you’re a pitcher and you know the cops have your hideout, are you going to keep going there? Of course not.
This has turned into a bad look in quick fashion.
The league is operating under the better-late-than-never principle, a reasonable but risky proposition.
The sticky stuff is plenty prevalent in the minor leagues as well, and it’s easy to understand why: When you’re making between $10,000 and $15,000 for an entire season of work, spending $15.99 on a 2.5-ounce puck of competition-grade Spider Tack offers some kind of ROI.
And if it’s one start and the player is paid throughout his time away — something for which the union will fight — what will be the public’s reaction to that in the wake of an Astros decision that has left reams of fans disillusioned and critical of Manfred’s ability to step up in a moment where leadership is paramount.
Give it to the longest-tenured umpire in baseball history: When he confiscated the hat of Cardinals reliever Giovanny Gallegos on May 27 because he found a foreign substance, he managed to inject himself into the middle of one of the biggest baseball stories in some time.
To call him the catalyst of this all wouldn’t be entirely accurate, but West certainly opened the blinds to shine some sunlight on what was happening in the sport.
If that vast majority comes through, the comparisons to the summer of ’68 will be long gone.
And if somehow they can coalesce around something that’s right for the sport — if they actually pull this off — then it’ll be worthy of a dance.