HOUSTON (SportsRadio 610)- Major League Baseball will start to crack down on players who put foreign substances on the baseball according to a memo made public on Tuesday, but Astros players had very little to say about the new rules before taking on the Texas Rangers on Tuesday night.
"Let me read (the memo) and then maybe I'll give some comments about it," Astros second baseman Jose Altuve said.
Altuve's manager echoed a similar refrain.
"I just got the memo today," Astros manager Dusty Baker said Tuesday afternoon. "They sent the memo out yesterday at 4:45, and then we had a meeting at 12:00 today. I don't just pick up email all day, every day. Yesterday's my off day, so I haven't really read the whole memo, but we went over part of it today, and I don't have any really comment on that right now."
The new guidelines put forth by Major League Baseball say players who are caught applying foreign substances to the baseball will be ejected and subjected to a 10-day suspension. Starting pitcher will be checked twice during their outings, while relievers will be checked at the end of innings or when they are removed from games. Baker said his issue was with the timing of the new rules.
"I wish that they had tried this and done this in spring training, and not wait until the middle of the season because these guys, they didn't think that they were doing anything really wrong, actually, and so now, now they have to adjust and readjust."
The application of foreign substances on the baseball as allowed pitcher's spin rates to sky rocket, making offense tough to come by, but with the Astros entering Tuesday's game sporting MLB's top scoring offense their hitters weren't concerned.
"Our offense has been doing great," Astros shortstop Carlos Correa said. "I feel like we've been consistent throughout the whole year, so we're not focusing on that too much. If pitches are going to break less because of that, I'll take it."
Some hitters, most notably, New York Mets All Star Pete Alonso signaled concern that making it tougher on pitchers to grip the baseball could lead to more hit by pitches, but MLB's memo stated with hit batsmen at all-time highs the last four years, so the added grip isn't helping protect hitters, a point Correa sounded skeptical about.
"I want to see that science behind that," he said.
With six games to play before the implementation of the consequences put forth by Major League Baseball the Astros will have time to digest how this may impact things on the field, but on Tuesday it was the furthest thing on their minds.
"If it's over the heart of the plate I gotta try and square those ones up," Alex Bregman said. "That's the that's the biggest thing for me right now offensively is just squaring up good pitches to hit and not chasing, so that's what I really, really got to focus on."
